Author: Anyi He
Like any farrow that flew from its nest alone, the nascent marriage from day one had no foundation from within. Li Wei's home, once the sanctuary of warmth, had become a battlefield of quiet resentment. Living with Li Wei's parents, there is always an inappropriate imbalance in the living room for 24 hours. The scent of Su Mei's jasmine tea, a familiar comfort, had faded, replaced by the suffocating weight of unspoken tension. The walls themselves seemed to hold their breath as if waiting for an inevitable fracture as if the cement had never solidified.
The silence soon melted into a wildfire. The sparkle of love cooled first from the one who started the fire in the first place—Li Wei's mother. Living with Li Wei and Su Mei, Li Wei's mother picked on every aspect of Su Mei: her yellowish bland outfit, intellectual inadequacy, and inability to do laundry. Li Wei's mother was judging on all her aspects, like a justice in the court. The inevitable cracks of the porcelain became the fuse that enraged both women. Li Wei's mother, steeped in the rigidity of tradition, was intolerable to Su Mei's "attitude" towards her. At the same time, Su Mei, as an individual female, was tired of the parental accusations against her. After all, she is Li Wei's mother, not hers. Even the dinner table, once a place of comfort, became a battleground of quarrels. Su Mei's carefully prepared dishes, infused with a delicate balance of tradition and innovation, were met with skepticism. The air crackled with unspoken disapproval as Li Wei's mother poked at her food, her dissatisfaction as palpable as the steam rising from the plates. Sitting between two boiled kettles, Li Wei was in despair about making decisions. At first, he tried to stay neutral, balancing the two kindly. Yet, often, neutrality means an enemy to both subjects. One evening, Su Mei and Li Wei's mother cast the final blow on the dinner table. "Pick One, Li Wei."
We don't know what happened after that, but we all know that Su Mei left the apartment for good the next day after that dinner. However, the emotional struggle was only the intro to this drama. The climax comes when Su Mei declares divorce to Li Wei. Neither knew at the time how much the divorce impacted both of them forever.
As many said, divorce was always about more than love lost; it was about reterritorialized power, social structure, and the cold weight of finances. With a prestigious Tsinghua University degree and a well-paying job, Li Wei represented an opportunity to Su Mei's family—a door to fortune. With no college degree, limited work experience, and living in a rural village, Su Mei had entered a marriage skewed by disparity. The imbalance once mediated by love is now tilted by the cold reality. Once the divorce decision was set, every line drawn in court, every clause thrown in the division of assets, became a struggle for Su Mei's family to secure as much as possible. They hired attorneys who specialized in securing "fortunes" for the underrepresented spouse and fought for every clause that benefited them financially.
Taken aback by the relentless demands, Li Wei's family was cornered into a bitter defensiveness. After the impulse of law, Li Wei was unwilling to surrender his fortune to her. This court case was increasingly difficult as time passed, as the love diminished daily. Putting more salt in Li Wei's wounds, Su Mei's parents began a public humiliation campaign aimed at Li Wei, determined to tarnish his reputation as far as they could. One day, they stormed into his company's office building, shouting accusations through a loudspeaker in front of the lobby's glass doors. Their voices penetrated not only the windows and the doors physically but were so vicious that they were deeply embedded in everyone's mind. They called him unfaithful and heartless and accused him of abandoning their daughters for wealth and ambition. People whispered in corridors, and Li Wei's best colleagues started to distance themselves from him.
The stigmatization was brutal. Li Wei was called into meetings after meetings with his superiors to discuss his future. He was forced to explain, to beg for understanding as his professional network withered. If not for his degree from Tsinghua and his past work efforts, he would have been cast aside and ruined beyond redemption. He would be homeless, jobless, and kicked from the elite status. Yet his family felt the sting, too, and the once-quit resentment simmered into a fury directed at Su Mei and her kin. The relationship between the two families eventually became beyond repair.
Then came the so-called reconciliation attempt—a meeting arranged by Su Mei's Family under the guise of peace. Li Wei arrived that evening, his defenses weak from months of turmoil, his eyes had zero lusters, and all he was hoping was perhaps to find a thread of humanity in the chaos. However, after his arrival, what awaited him was not his past spouse but a line of men, each standing tall, stern, armed with rods clenched in rough hands. They left him with two choices: to surrender to their financial demands or face a lesson in pain and submission. He chose the former but without consequences. That night, he returned home bruised and humiliated. In China, there is one traditional proverb, "男儿有泪不轻弹，只因未到伤心处, "meaning "A man doesn't shed tears easily; it's only because his heart has yet to be truly broken." Haunted by a feeling that went beyond physical pain, perhaps betrayal, or maybe violation, Li Wei tore out all his past 20 years of grief.
And still, after the papers were signed and the demands were met, the story ended—no, it did not. The battle soon changed from financial reasons to the one blood that connected both, their shared baby.