Chapter 1

Chen Shuo and I met when we were twenty-three.

We were both poor then.

Unashamedly so.

He’d just started a technical job at a state-owned company, taking home a little over six thousand yuan a month. I worked in cost estimation at an engineering consultancy, on a basic salary of forty-eight hundred. When the project bonuses came through depended entirely on the boss’s mood.

Our first date was over rice noodles in the basement of a shopping centre.

For our second, we went to the cinema. He’d bought two discounted tickets online. Afterwards, looking embarrassed, he said, “The restaurants round here are a bit expensive. Shall we go to a convenience store?”

I said yes.

We bought a rice ball each and sat outside the shop until eleven.

For years afterwards, that was the time I missed most.

Because there was so little to divide.

No home, no car, no care for ageing parents to arrange on either side, no children, no household registration to sort out, no school catchment areas, and no question of whose career should be sacrificed.

All we talked about was where to go at the weekend.

Once, a traffic officer stopped him for giving me a ride on a shared bicycle and fined us twenty yuan. We laughed about that twenty yuan for a fortnight.

I used to believe that if two people could endure hardship together, they could build a life together.

Later, I learned that wasn’t true.

Enduring hardship together only requires both people to be broke.

Living together requires something else: roughly the same answer to the question of who should give what.

Chen Shuo came from a small county town.

His father used to do repairs at the local power supply office; his mother had spent a few years stocking shelves in a supermarket. His parents put him through university, then contributed most of their savings towards his down payment.

He was devoted to them.

I used to love that about him.

My own family was ordinary too. My father was a bus driver who’d worked the early shift for more than twenty years before retiring. My mother was a cashier at a pharmacy.

I was an only child. My parents’ greatest hope for me was that I’d “find someone reliable and not have too hard a life.”

When we were twenty-five, Chen Shuo first brought up marriage.

I was preparing for my Level One Cost Engineer qualification at the time, and said no.

“That’s fine,” he said. “I’ll wait.”

At twenty-six, I passed.

The company began letting me run projects on my own. The day I received my first year-end bonus, I bought him a watch that cost over four thousand yuan.

He wore it for three years.

At twenty-seven, we started looking at flats.

For the first time, I realised that something between us wasn’t quite right.

But back then, I told myself the discomfort was just part of learning to compromise before marriage.

Most women tell themselves the same things.

Don’t be so sensitive.

Don’t keep score.

What wedding doesn’t come with a mess of problems?

He’s already a good man.

What more do you want?

And so a lot of the questions that truly mattered were buried under, “That’s good enough. Let it go.”