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Chapter 10 Should I Forgive Her?
At noon with warm sun and cold wind, on the path leading to the south gate of the campus, a boy and a girl, facing the limitations of the times and the cruel competition of family resources, were so powerless.
Some people would say that study was not the only way out. Why did she behave so miserable? But in that era, in the countryside inaccessible to much information, what else could a girl like Xue do except study?
After dropping out of school, she had to work early as a family laborer, helping her parents with the farm work, doing even more than her parents. Because she was a girl and she would marry someone sooner or later. Her parents needed to squeeze her value to get more wealth for the family before she married.
Maybe when she was sixteen or eighteen, her parents would find a man to marry her, so that they could receive the "bride price" a few years earlier. She might also get pregnant first and become a mother of several children early. When she reached the marriageable age, she and her husband would go to the Civil Affairs Bureau to get a marriage certificate and hold a weddingbanquet. That would be her whole life.
At that time, there were many girls like Xue. She represented precisely the most common fate of most girls who dropped out of school. This was not an occasional case, but a whole generation's sadness.
Xue wiped away her tears. She took a deep breath and said with a smile, "Uh, I explained to the head teacher about the material fee, and you can be a clean person afterward."
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