Uncle Zhong Shan and Aunt Zhao Mei were an ordinary elderly couple from the countryside, living a life as simple, hardworking, and content as most of the local people.
Zhong Shan was a taciturn farmer who, despite selling his labor for a lifetime, could only maintain his family's basic needs. The marriages of his two sons not only drained the savings he and his wife had scrimped and saved, but also left him with a heavy debt. Even so, the joy and laughter of his grandchildren made all the hardship worth it in his heart.
Zhao Mei was a penny-pinching rural woman. No woman is born sharp-tongued or mean—it's all life's forcing hand. She was stingy not just toward her husband and mother-in-law but even more so with herself. Yet, when Grandma Zhong brought over Ye Qiu to raise, Zhao Mei did nothing more than gossip, never truly casting Ye Qiu out. And when Grandma Zhong became old and immobile, Zhao Mei took diligent care of her mother-in-law.
