Chapter 7

I asked the girls, “We really can leave now. Are you going?”

“Hmph! Leave just like that and let those heartless people off so easily?”

“Pah! They don’t deserve to be called human!”

“Make them wait at least another fifty years. When they die, we’ll ask them properly: we were children too, so why did we have to suffer such cruelty?”

…

“But now they seem to value girls more than boys!”

A timid little boy’s voice suddenly broke into the chorus of girls.

“They threw us here because they wanted daughters, didn’t they?”

I looked at him coldly. He shrank back.

“Without me, the stray dogs would have eaten you long ago!”

As I spoke, one of our sisters revealed her true form, torn to pieces by stray dogs.

The little boy was too frightened to speak again.

If you haven’t suffered as someone else has, don’t urge them to be kind.

If you had suffered as I did, you might not be as kind as me.

Hundred Flowers Ravine—or Eternal Peace Ravine, as it should now be called.

Eternal Peace Ravine grew livelier than it had ever been.

People came every day to make offerings. Toys, snacks, and flowery dresses lay in piles everywhere.

White-haired old women came to sob that they missed the daughters they had thrown into the ravine fifty years before.

Women only in their thirties came too, praying that the angry spirits would hurry up and leave so they could have daughters soon.

Even the mother who had tried to hit me with a wooden ladle came.

She wept as though regret had broken her heart.

“We were so poor back then. Mother couldn’t afford to raise you!”

But I remembered that she had been feeding more than a dozen fat pigs.

“If you’re still willing to come home, Mother will treat you well!”

Of course she would. After me, she had given birth to four more sons.

She had good reason to cry.

I asked her daughter’s angry spirit, “Do you want to go back?”

Half her face was gone, and part of one arm was missing.

“What for? So she can raise me and sell me for a bride price?”

Surprised, I asked, “You can see what she’s thinking?”

She clenched her teeth and forced out the words. “We once shared the same blood, after all.”

Yes. They had once shared the same blood. How bitterly ironic those words were!

Another of the village’s few girls married.

The son of a wealthy family in the county seat took her as his wife.

Apparently, there was a car, an apartment—everything—plus five hundred thousand yuan in cash as the bride price.

Her parents didn’t let her take a single cent back with her.

With that money, her two younger brothers finally had some hope of finding wives.

Families raising sons in the village were green with envy, and grinding their teeth with resentment.

Why should that family’s sons be so lucky? How had they got the money for wives so easily?

Girls were still rare treasures, but having money certainly made you more competitive than having none.

If only they had a suitable girl in their own families, they would have nothing left to worry about.

Once they started thinking like that, they became all the more determined to have daughters.

I enjoyed their endless offerings in Eternal Peace Ravine and watched their tearful performances for amusement.

There was food, there was drink, and there was entertainment. Life was quite pleasant.

For those longing for daughters, though, having their hopes dashed was a bitter experience.

I could distinctly feel that baby boys had begun appearing in the ravine more frequently.

If a family really did have a daughter, however, they would celebrate with great fanfare and a lavish feast.

“That used to be how they treated boys.”

The boy spirit who had once talked back to me spoke resentfully.

But there was nothing he could do. That was how things were now.

Those so-called parents had never truly longed for their children. They had only longed for the kind of child they wanted.

When they wanted sons, daughters were burdens to be tossed aside at will.

It was the same when they wanted daughters.

Unfortunately for them, without the binding of Hundred Flowers Ravine, the angry spirits were freer than ever.

Wherever a baby girl was born, they volunteered to go and interfere.

A child who wasn’t truly loved would only suffer by coming into this place.

Better not to come at all.

We lived together like that, a little group of angry spirits. None of us looked down on the others, and we had a good time playing together.