Cheng Huan Ji

Mai Chenghuan is an ordinary young woman living in government-subsidized housing. A stellar student from childhood, she moved smoothly into a government job after university; she has a wealthy boyfriend, Xin Jialiang, their relationship is stable, and her life is moving along a plain, safe track. Everything changes as the wedding approaches: her usually hardworking, kindly mother suddenly turns fierce, demanding that her daughter marry in style—a bigger diamond ring, a grander banquet, more face and more respect, fighting for every bit of it. Filial Mai Chenghuan is caught between her mother and her future in-laws, pulled both ways and worn out trying to cope. After all the struggles and humiliations, just when the wedding seems settled at last, a upheaval in the groom's family forces it to be postponed. And after this whole tug-of-war over "being the good daughter at her parents' knees," Mai Chenghuan begins to reexamine her relationship with family, marriage, and life, learning not to hand the weight of her life to others. In her customary crisp, spare style, Yi Shu writes of a young city woman's real circumstances and inner order, of the complex, unspeakable debt and grievance between mother and daughter, and of how a woman slowly grows a pair of feet of her own amid the trivialities of daily life.