The Courtyard’s Pampered Wife in the 70s

Gu Shunhua realized she was a side character in a retro-era novel just as she was buying a roasted sweet potato in Dashilan Alley.
The familiar Beijing accent rang in her ears: “Are you buying it or not?”
She dropped the sweet potato and bolted straight for the train station. According to the novel’s plot, she would soon divorce her husband temporarily just to return to the city. But at the moment of divorce, her cousin Chen Lu would seize the chance to marry her ex-husband, bear him children, and bask in his rise to success—while her own twins would end up imprisoned for embezzling company funds. The book’s tone, full of superiority thinly veiled as pity, reads:
”Gu Shunhua wasn’t truly e...