FSC [QT] Chapter 133.2

“Who knows? Maybe they got married early. This is not something we should care about. Okay, stop talking. It will be bad if someone hears us talking about the patient’s private affairs.”

The older nurse realized that their topic seemed to involve the patient’s privacy, so she quickly shut them up and told the other two nurses not to talk anymore.

The two young nurses seemed to be a little afraid of the older nurse. After being persuaded by the other party, they stopped discussing and concentrated on the work at hand.

At this time, silence returned to Ah Wu’s ears again. Then, a bunch of memories filled her mind like snowflakes.

Zhuo Wu, whose original name was Zhuo Xiaomei, was a girl born in a poor rural village in the northwest.

The Zhuo family had many brothers and sisters. Although she was the youngest girl in the family, she was not favored or valued by her parents.

The poorer the place, the more people believe that a large population can determine the rise and fall of a family. In that place, family planning is just an empty policy, and the population is still growing wildly.

When Zhuo Xiaomei was born, Zhuo’s mother, who was over 47 years old, welcomed her seventh grandson. Zhuo Xiaomei was just a daughter and did not receive any sympathy from her parents.

In this place, girls represent more of an amount of money, a number of how much family property has been spent, and a number of how much dowry can be returned to the family.

Living in such a family, Zhuo Xiaomei only attended the village primary school for a few years to avoid becoming illiterate. Then, at the very young age of fourteen, she married her husband Mu Feng at the decision of her elders.

At the age of fourteen, when a normal child was still in junior high school, Zhuo Xiaomei had already become the wife of a sixteen-year-old boy.

This seemed very absurd and unbelievable to those who had lived a carefree life since childhood, but it really happened. And, until the 21st century when Zhuo Wu was thirty-nine years old, such absurd things were still happening in her hometown and other remote and poor places.

It was unfortunate to get married at the age of fourteen, but for Zhuo Xiaomei, marrying her husband Mu Feng at the age of fourteen might be her greatest luck.

From that day on, her life ushered in a turning point.

Mu Feng was a teenager who was completely different from those around him who catered to their parents’ arrangements and lived according to their parents’ old ways. He was ambitious and longed for the outside world.

He married a local girl as arranged by his parents to ensure that he could leave the village smoothly. In the second month after his marriage, he took his newlywed wife Zhuo Xiaomei and embarked on the road of going out to seek gold.

In the first year, they took a lot of detours and suffered a lot.

Because they rarely dealt with people outside, on the first day they arrived in Shenzhen, they were cheated of the only more than 70 yuan they had by the swindlers in the train station.

During that time, they could only sleep on the ground by the road in the park, then go to the public toilet to get water, and eat the steamed buns and pancakes brought from home.

At that time, Zhuo Xiaomei was still young. She did not blame her equally young husband. She just wiped her tears and cried sadly. She didn’t cry loudly, just sobbing softly.

Mu Feng was a responsible man. Perhaps at the beginning, he just regarded Zhuo Xiaomei as a tool for him to leave the village, but when he saw that he had put Zhuo Xiaomei in such a dilemma, he immediately felt guilty.

From then on, he vowed to treat Zhuo Xiaomei as his responsibility and never let her down in his life.

Mu Feng was a smart man. Even though his Mandarin was accented with a strong rural accent at that time, which easily attracted the attention of others, he still actively talked and communicated with the locals.

Thanks to Mu Feng’s efforts, the couple both found suitable jobs.

Mu Feng became a porter, specializing in carrying goods for merchants who came to Shenzhen to purchase goods. Zhuo Xiaomei was too young, so she helped wash dishes in the kitchens of those small restaurants.

The couple rented a small room, and in the late 1990s, the couple began their life of hard work in Shenzhen.

Becoming a porter is a hard labor job. Carrying hundreds of kilograms of goods only earns two or three yuan a day. At the end of the day, when business is good, you can earn 40 or 50 yuan, which means 1,000 to 2,000 yuan a month.

The late 1990s was a period of rapid economic development in China.

During this period, many workers who originally had stable jobs were laid off. At the same time, emerging capital rose rapidly, and people’s monthly income also jumped from the original three-digit to four-digit ranks.

 

*****

Translator’s Encyclopedia

Family Planning in China (Part 2)

Two-child Policy

On 29 October 2015, it was reported that the existing law would be changed to a two-child policy.

The reason the government decided to implement a two child policy instead of abolishing the limitations on child birth in general, was because they were scared of a baby boom occurring.

The benefits of this policy is that it would allow families to have their preferred number of children, significantly limit the amount of abortions and provide a stable sex ratio. In May of 2015 1.5 million of the 11 million eligible couples submitted applications in order to be eligible to have a second child.

Through recent research under the two-child policy the percentage of people over the age of 65 is estimated to increase to 42%.

 

Three-child Policy

This policy was introduced in May 2021 to replace the two-child policy. The policy was intended to improve China’s declining birth rate.

In July 2021, the government removed all penalties for couples who have as many children as they want.

The three-child policy increased the birth rate and changed the age structure of China’s population.

(Source: Wikipedia)

 

 

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