A Girl Named Faithful Plum Read Online Free PDF

home, about a farm girl who refused to marry the emperor’s son, because she was in love with a simple boy from her village. “I’d rather die,” the girl had said, a line that deeply impressed the eleven-year-old Zhongmei.
    “Zhongmei, this is silly and bad for your health,” her mother told her. “Please eat something.”
    “You won’t have to take care of me anymore,” Zhongmei said, that radio drama in her mind, tears wetting her cheeks. “I’m going to die.”
    “Stubborn girl!” Ma said, mightily annoyed. “I should have given you away like I planned to do.”
    Zhongmei was shocked into silence by that remark. Growing up, she had always known that her parents, being poor and already having two girls and a boy, had decided before she was born that they would give her to a couple that lived nearby in the village and had no children of their own. But Zhongmei came into the world on December 27, 1966, so small and sickly that her mother had to nurse her for several months, and after she’d done that, looking every day into her new little girl’s innocent eyes, she no longer had the heart to give her away.
    This story was told often in the Li household. Zhongmei had heard it since she was small. Everybody knew it. And everybodyin Baoquanling also knew that the couple that had been slated to become her parents, whose name was Wong and who lived just a few doors down the lane from the Li house, were sorely disappointed when Zhongmei’s mother decided to keep her. They had no children and the Lis now had four, and Zhongmei imagined whenever she saw them that they looked at her longingly. Worse, when her mother got angry at her, which didn’t happen often but it did happen, she would tell her that the Wongs still wanted her and she could still be given away.
    “If you don’t behave, I’m going to give you to Mr. and Mrs. Wong,” Xiuying would snap.
    Zhongmei knew that this wasn’t true. It was only her hardworking and hard-pressed mother’s way of expressing her annoyance. Still, the idea that the Wongs had hoped to have her embarrassed her and frightened her. It gave her mother’s annoyance a special sharpness. Whenever Zhongmei walked past the Wongs’ gate, which she did almost every day on her way to school, a kind of nervousness crawled over her skin and she would shiver until she had reached the end of the lane. And now with her hunger strike she had carried disobedience to a new level. Would her mother really give her away this time?
    No, Zhongmei said to herself, lying on the
kang
, feeling her hunger like an empty space inside her. Or would she?
    “Can I talk to you?”
    Zhongmei, who had been facing the wall, turned and watched Lao Lao hobble to the
kang
and sit down next toZhongmei. She hobbled because she had bound feet. As with many Chinese women of her generation, born near the beginning of the twentieth century when China was still ruled by an emperor, Lao Lao’s feet had been wrapped tightly in cloth bands when she was a small girl so their growth would be stunted. Lao Lao had told Zhongmei how horribly painful it was, and that Zhongmei was lucky to be a girl at a time when the practice had stopped. But the custom had been carried out for centuries, because for centuries the Chinese thought tiny feet made a woman desirable. The story of Lao Lao’s bound feet fascinated Zhongmei, but it also horrified her and made her indignant. How could people inflict such terrible pain on young girls? It was almost painful just to look at Lao Lao’s feet, tiny and curved so that her toes faced backward toward her heel. She could walk, but only very slowly with steps almost as tiny as her feet. It was because of those feet that Zhongmei felt a special tenderness toward her
lao lao
, who seemed to her like a delicate porcelain cup that would shatter in a million pieces if it were rudely handled.
    “You know, it’s not a good thing what you’re doing, this not eating,” Lao Lao said.
    “Oh, Lao