1:50:30-1:53:30
The original content in the book is:
“Hsiang Lin’s Wife, that was really a bad bargain,” continued Liu Ma mysteriously. “If you had held out longer or knocked yourself to death, it would have been better. As it is, after living with your second husband for less than two years, you are guilty of a great crime. Just think: when you go down to the lower world in future, these two men’s ghosts will fight over you. To which will you go? The King of Hell will have no choice but to cut you in two and divide you between them. I think, really. . . . .”
Then terror showed in her face. This was something she had never heard in the mountains.
“I think you had better take precautions beforehand. Go to the Tutelary God’s Temple and buy a threshold to be your substitute, so that thousands of people can walk over it and trample on it, in order to atone for your sins in this life and avoid torment after death.”
At the time Hsiang Lin’s Wife said nothing, but she must have taken this to heart, for the next morning when she got up there were dark circles beneath her eyes. After breakfast she went to the Tutelary God’s Temple at the west end of the village, and asked to buy a threshold. The temple priests would not agree at first, and only when she shed tears did they give a grudging consent. The price was twelve thousand cash.
Here Liu Ma told Hsiang Lin’s Wife that what was going to happen to her after she died in some old belief. That belief was due to the ancient feudal dogma that a woman couldn’t marry two husband. And the reason was that women’s status was very low in the ancient times in China. So in a word, the feudal dogma was the reason of all of these tragedies happened on Hsiang Lin’s Wife.
First of all, I noticed that she doesn’t even have her own name. People called her by her dead husband’s name, which indicated that she was a lonely person and no one really cared about her. When her mother in law asked for hers salary. Her boss just gave her without hesitation. When she was robbed to be a bride, people around her cared about not but their own interests. Her life was played by her husband’s family. She was sold and slaved. Her life was so pathetic.
When her son was killed by a wolf, she was useless to her ‘family’. So she was able to come back to the Lu town once again. But her mental state was very poor. It is so heartbreaking that she kept talking about her son. She told her story repeatedly to people in town but no one pitied her. People’s hearts were cold and hard. Part of the reason was they despised her because she didn’t commit suicide.
Should she commit suicide? Maybe, but why didn’t she? Would it because there was no way to make things better by committing suicide? In a world that was so cold and dogmatic, she was just becoming insensitive. There was some hope in her heart that made her wanted to fight against the destiny. But she has already been unable to feel sad. In the previous part of her remarriage. She couldn’t even cry but she was just yelling all the way to her new house. So would suicide make things different for her? Maybe not because she has already became a person who was so insensitive.
However, when Mao was burned. There was some new hope in her life. Her son was her happiness. But eventually her happiness was gone. In the part that I chose, Liu Ma suggested her to buy a tredshold to redeem her ‘sins’. At that time, maybe she has already been thinking about dying. Because she wanted to reunite with her son. So she bought a tredshold.
This was also a pathetic scene because she was played by the feudal dogma but she deeply believed in it. This is also very touching because we can see there was a pure love of mother even in a society where was so cold and insensitive. However, it was also desperate because the cruel fate and the numb society would even give a hope to a mother who lose her son.