“Ma, eeh, eeh, ma wake up, eeh, eeh wake up ma, baby is scared ma, eeh maa..”, there was a sound echoing in my ear, it was a girl’s cry. I don’t understand what happened to me, only thing I know was it was getting more and more difficult for me to breath, this suffocation was killing me.
Today morning, I was busy with the cultural festival at our college. I had been helping the drama club with adjusting the costume and doing the final stitches. I got a call from my best friend saying that she needs my help and is in the green room on the 3rd floor. I rushed towards the stairs and was climbing the stairs towards the 3rd floor in my heels. Suddenly a man in ancient costume was running down in the same steps. He stepped on his own dress and stumbled towards me, and accidentally pushed me down and regained his stability. The last vision I had was his shocked face and me falling backwards. I could feel something hit hard on my head and then it was a total numbness.
My vision blurred and a set of memories that did not belong to me rush toward me. It was the memory of a girl who lived more than 10 centuries back. It was in a country called Tanhuang that does not exist in our world. She was born in a village called Yejia. Yajia village is a considerably large village with nearly 100 families. There are 2 major clans in the village: Ye and Hui with 40 and 50 families respectively. Balance population belongs to numerous other surnames of small numbers. Hui Juan was the daughter of the Hui clan leader (patriarch). Hui clan leader and wife had boys for her first 2 times of pregnancies, on the 3rd time she had a beautiful girl. Everyone said the girl child was very beautiful and they have started asking for marriage from her age of 1. The parents had loved her even more than the boys. Even the boys liked having others gossip about their pretty sister. They named her Hui Jia.
On the 4th time of pregnancy, the madam gave birth to a slightly premature girl baby. This time the clan leader and his parents were not so satisfied with this wife, since Song Shu gave birth to 2 girls in a row. The brothers also didn’t like this girl much. And they named her Hui Juan.
As she grew up, Hui Juan didn't receive any love from her parents and siblings. Her elder sister was 2 years older than her. So being the first girl child in the family, Hui Jia received all the new clothes, and Hui Juan got all old clothes of Hui Jia (poor households in villages tend to reuse dresses till they are torn beyond repair). So as time progressed Jia started shining and Juan started fading. When Juan was 6 years old, Madam Song again got pregnant and gave birth to a baby boy. Then everyone’s dissatisfaction towards Madam Song got erased. And Madam Song loved that boy child the most. She persuaded the family to send him to study in school. Madam Song was also very particular about her beautiful daughter Jia and didn't allow her to enter the kitchen, so basically all the work of helping mother in the kitchen was shouldered by Hui Juan.
This Hui Juan had the similar look as myself and many of her likes are the same. Watching her life being forgotten by the family even after she did everything to be the perfect good girl, is making me feel sad. And her sister was being treated as a pearl, further pushing her into being a gloomy introvert girl. As they grow older, Hui Jia started getting numerous proposals, but all of them where rejected by Madam Song, who believed that her beautiful daughter deserved a better husband than those mud legs. Even Hui Juan received some proposals, being the Hui Clan Leader's daughter, they where rejected too, but only because her mother thought that it was improper to marry the younger sister as the elder sister is not married.And it got pushed till Jia was 17 and Juan was 15 (in that time period, girl’s get married usually at 14 or 15). At last from the hotel Tao’s owner’s son’s proposal came. Hotel Tao was a medium class hotel which was relatively famous in town, and Madam Song was overjoyed and agreed.
Everyone in the village praised Hui Jia and said it was her good luck to be married to the Tao family. At first everyone praised her, and initially Hui Jia was happy. But later she realized that while she is now still beautiful and has Tao Win's love, as Years go by her beauty will fade. And with it her husband´s love.
Would his sisters-in-law's bully her, as she is from the village? The more she thought about it, the more depressed she became.
She started crying to her mother, saying she didn't want to marry into the town anymore. And while Madam Song didn’t agree with her rubbish, she also felt the crisis of her daughter. This brought her into an uncomfortable situation, as the Tao family provided them with a bride price of 7 silver. No girl had ever received such a high bride price in their village.
Mother Hui discussed it with her husband Hui Da, their clan leader. She told him of how difficult her daughter’s life in the town would be and how they might bully her thinking they were mud legs. So, the Hui family finally came up with a decision of giving them rich dowry. And hence on the day of marriage the entire village and even the groom’s side was shocked seeing their huge dowry, a cow.
In this age of time cow’s have the prestige of a benz or bmw. A cow cost about 15 silver and that was the biggest dowry given even in all the nearby villages. And at last Hui Jia left home with confidence and happiness.
Ye family of the clan leader Ye was also jealous of this marriage. Madam Ye Lan, the wife of the clan leader, was a shrewd lady by nature. She had 6 children and her least favourite was Ye Qui, her second son whom she had a hard time giving birth. Ever since he was a child, he was so naughty and wouldn't listen to her words. As he grew older, he was even more naughty would run off to the neighbouring village and would climb on top of a tree near teacher Shaw’s house and would listen to his lectures. Several times Madam Shaw has complained about this. When she would ask him not to disgrace them, he had even questioned her, why his younger brother was allowed to study and he couldn’t. This angered her so much since her younger son was predicted by a monk to be an official in the future. She believed Ye Qui had started to calculate against her younger son Ye Zihao. Hence from then on she was extra cautious of her 13 year old son and with the help of his father drove him to the fields. Ever since she didn’t give him a moment to resist and made him do all the hardworks in the field.
Madam Ye Lan had planned to not to let Ye Qui marry, and to keep him at home to be an old bachelor at home since then no property would then be divided to him. And so she rejected all his marriage proposals and dragged him to 18 and even married his two years younger brother (the third son: Ye Xue) . At this time she also heard about this wonderful offer of dowry of a cow given to the daughter of the Hui family. And the cow in their family was so old and nearing its life span. She gritted her teeth and sold the ox for 4 silver (old cow’s meat is very hard and not prefered) and asked Hui Juan for Ye Qui for bride price of 2 silver.
The Hui family was so angry since 2 silver is the bride price given to poor families or girl’s with some defect. Normal price was 3 silvers and in rich families like Hui family and Ye family (since they are clan leaders family, they both are one of the richest families in the village) it would be 4 or 5 silvers. At first they thought not to agree but their second brother’s marriage was also pushed and currently there is a real tightness in the family. So they pushed all the blame to Hui Juan for being ugly. But Hui Juan was not ugly, she was just average in the village. The Hui family thought it was a waste to feed her again and agreed for the marriage. And for marriage they didn’t give her any dowry and only a set of her broken clothes.
Madam Ye was so angry for seeing that there is no cow, and believed the Hui family didn’t take them to eye and concluded that her son was considered a waste in the eyes of the Hui family. In this village of 100 families or more, there are only 7 families which had cattle. And cattle are considered as the baby by all the villagers. She sold her cattle while thinking that they would give a cow as dowry and now what, there was not even a silver coin. Her anger towards her second son and this newly married daughter in law was soaring. From the moment Hui Juan reached the family she started blaming and cursing her for all that happened. About that time, the country had gone for war, and the emperor ordered every household to either pay 4 silver or send a man of age 15 to 35 to send for war. This news brought the entire village to sadness.
Ye mother decided to send his son who was married only for 4 days to war to save that 4 silver. Ye Qui didn’t agree and refused. This incident shocked Hui Juan and she ran back home crying and begged her parents to speak for her husband and don’t let him go to war. But the Hui family was already displeased with her husband since he didn’t visit the bride's family on the 3rd after the marriage. They closed the door in front of her.
This incident has been spread to the entire village and everyone started gossiping about the joke made by Hui Juan, this further angered the Madam Ye and clan leader Ye and they ordered Ye Qui to divorce Hui Juan and go to the battle. Even the village head got involved in this matter and persuaded him to go for battle (village head is the cousin of clan leader Ye). Ye Qui felt touched by how much Hui Juan cared for him as she is the only one who didn't want him to go. Because of everyone’s persuasion he finally agreed to go for battle but didn’t divorce Hui Juan. And so he left for the war on the 10th day after his marriage.
After he left, Madam Ye treated Hui Juan as a slave and made her do all the work in the house and sometimes even starved her. About some 3 months later they found that Juan was pregnant but still didn’t decrease her workload. And Hui Juan gave birth to a baby girl and named her Ye Roulan. Ye family got further displeased with her for giving birth to a girl. And as the time passed and seasons changed, Juan and her daughter suffered hardship for 6 years.
During this summer Ye families youngest son Ye Zihao who had been studying under master Shaw visited home, and wished to eat fish. Then Madam Ye drove Hui Juan to go to the river to catch fish. Juan didn’t know how to swim or fish. At first she stayed on shallow water but due to the further scolding of Madam Ye, she moved towards deeper and lost balance due to a sudden tide and drowned to death. With the help of a few villagers she was pulled back to the riverside.
