Liang Shengdi was born in 1922. By then, the Qing Dynasty had already perished, but it left behind too many Qing loyalists.
Ever since she could remember, Liang Shengdi knew that she was redundant because her parents always called her a money-loser.
The only function is probably to bless the family to have a younger brother.
She was the first child. Before her younger brother was born, she must have had several younger sisters, but she forgot how many.
She once suspected that she was not sold because someone had to stay to do the work.
Besides, she has been eating sweet potatoes for several years, so it would not be cost-effective to sell them casually.
Then keep it and sell it well.
The story is similar to that of a poor girl in that era. She was not well fed and clothed, and had the lowest status in the family. Even her five or six-year-old brother could curse at her.
In order to eat, she always ran all over the mountains and fields, digging bamboo shoots and mushrooms, catching rabbits and birds, and catching fish and shrimps... Sometimes she did it when she was called to pick wild vegetables, sometimes when the adults were taking a nap, and sometimes in the middle of the night.
Because she would never bring any food back home. She would just roast something outside and eat it before going home.
Only once, her brother found two bird eggs in her pocket. She had caught several quails that day and rarely had a full meal, so she wanted to save these two eggs for the next day when she was hungry.
As a result, the boy turned the egg over and snatched it away on the spot. When Liang Shengdi wanted to take it back, he screamed and called for the adults. In the end, not only was the egg confiscated and put into his stomach, but he also got beaten by the adults.
"Everything in this house belongs to your brother. Everything you eat and drink now is given to you by him out of kindness, don't you understand? But you, while enjoying yourself outside, don't even remember to bring your brother along! You're such a heartless ungrateful bastard!"
Liang Shengdi held her head in her arms with her legs tucked into her stomach, curling herself into a ball without saying a word. Occasionally, she would peek out, only to see the boy gloatingly eating the bird eggs she had found, and she would be filled with rage.
Liang Shengdi would occasionally pinch or kick the boy when the adults weren't paying attention, and even though she would always get beaten, she would kick him just as hard the next time as the adults had beaten her.
Her parents thought that this girl was too vicious and that this family could not tolerate her.
Fortunately, she is already 16 years old and looks decent. She can be sold to a wealthy family as a concubine or a child bride. As long as they take the money, it's fine.
Liang Shengdi originally thought this was a good idea. At least it was a wealthy family and if she married into them she might be able to have enough to eat.
But she overlooked one thing.
That was the case these days, girls were the least valuable. When wealthy families wanted women, some would be from families better off than theirs, and the wealthy families her father nursed were probably only slightly better off than theirs.
Sure enough, the family her father found for her, although considered a landlord, was not the kind of landlord with a large number of maids. Instead, it was a small landlord who had a lot of land and hired two long-term workers to work the land.
The landlord was already sixty, about the same age as her grandparents, and had an eighty-year-old mother above her. It was said that she had wasted the lives of her previous wives. Her two sons had already had sons, so there were several mouths to feed at home, and whether they could be well fed depended entirely on her husband's mood.
Liang Shengdi touched her belly. She felt that based on her personality, the other person probably wouldn't be in such a good mood.
So she decided to run away.
But she didn't act immediately.
There are too many girls who want to run away these days, but very few succeed.
Liang Shengdi knew that they were already discussing marriage, and she didn't even let her go to the mountains for the past two days, just to prevent her from running away.
So she started to act very happy and asked a few stupid questions from time to time,
If I get married, will I be able to have enough to eat?
Now that I'm married, you have to make me two new sets of clothes, right?
I'm about to get married, can you give me an extra sweet potato today?
Her betrothal gift was a dollar, which of course would never reach her hands, but she knew where the jar where her father hid the money was, buried under the big tree behind the house!
Perhaps because he believed that she really wanted to marry him, and also thought that even if she accepted the betrothal gift, she would not be allowed to go there looking pale and thin, Liang Shengdi had been eating quite well these days.
Just two days before the date set for the body to be carried away, Liang Shengdi sprinkled some homemade medicinal powder into the porridge she was making for her family in the evening.
These were all the experiences she had gained from digging wild vegetables in the mountains over the years. Although she didn't know the specific names of those herbs, she knew that eating them would make her sleep soundly, at least until dawn.
That night she still ate her dried sweet potatoes and didn't crave the sweet potato porridge at all.
She waited until midnight to make sure that everyone in the family was fast asleep before she secretly got up and went to the back to dig out the jar where the money was saved.
Most of the money inside was copper coins, with only two dollars in total, one of which should be the money she got from selling her body.
She didn't plan to take more, nor did she plan to take a whole dollar. Instead, she took out a small bag and planned to count out 128 copper coins into it.
I heard that in the market outside, one dollar is equivalent to one hundred and twenty-eight copper coins.
But there was a problem. Liang Shengdi's math knowledge only allowed her to count from 1 to 10.
Ten tens make 100, and she spent a long time just counting these ten tens. Fortunately, she had been drugged at dinner, otherwise her father would have beaten her to death just by counting the money.
She couldn't count whether it was 128 copper coins or 118 copper coins in the end, but a full bag was enough.
She kept the copper coins scattered around her body, some in her pockets, some on the soles of her shoes, some in her bra pockets, and some in her underwear pockets. It felt like her small body weighed at least several pounds.
She still didn't get any new clothes, so she could only take her only tattered cotton-padded jacket and a tattered quilt as thin as a blanket, carry the hoe she used to dig wild vegetables, and carry five pounds of sweet potatoes from the kitchen. If she had to carry more, she wouldn't be able to run fast.
As for whether her parents would be furious when they woke up the next day and found out she had run away and stolen money, that was none of her business.
She had been working for the family for as long as she could remember. Even if she was a farmhand, she should be paid, right? Besides, she had woven so many baskets in the past few years. They had sold them all, so she had never seen the money, hadn't she?
Even when they killed the chicken last year, they refused to give her a single bite of the meat! Even a bowl of chicken soup would be fine!
She felt no guilt at all about taking the money. If she wanted to survive, she had to run away, and if she wanted to run away, she had to have money.
Although there was chaos outside and wars were everywhere, and I didn't know where to run, I had food and money in my hands.
At least I can have a good meal before I die, right?
In this way, Liang Shengdi set out in the dark.
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