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The death of a soulful hair salon girl
By Fu Jianfeng (southweekend)
Updated: 2005-10-20 08:57 The happy life of Gou Li began at the end of 2003 when she met Chen Xiaolin.
She was on the way to work in a city.
A drawing from Gou's diary, depicting an
intimate couple. [southcn.com] |
|"She looked
really good when she smiles, so I was attracted." At the time, Chen Xiaolin was
sitting across Gou Li, but he did not dare speak to her. Gou Li also felt
something and she asked to borrow his telephone. That was how they got
acquainted.
Soon their love grew quickly. Chen Xiaolin asked: "My family is very poor.
Would you mind?" Gou Li said: "I don't mind." Gou Li told him very honestly that
she had a boyfriend before but he was not good to her. She had an abortion once.
But if he truly loved her and did not mind that, she was willing to live with
him for a lifetime.
Chen Xiaolin was touched. The two got married one month after they got to
know each other.
Gou Li's family lives in a remote and impoverished mountain district in
Shaanxi province Baoji city Linyou county. Gou's father died young and her two
older brothers barely managed to support her to complete secondary school.
Afterwards, she had to go to work. There are five people in Chen Xiaolin's
family. The sister is married, so there are the parents and a younger brother.
To go from the county center to Chen's family takes 3 to 4 hours with lots of
steep slopes and cliffs. When our reporter went there on a local tricycle, the
experience was comparable to a roller coaster ride. The Chen family has more
than 30 mu of dry land, and their income is like others in the village at about
2,000 RMB per annum, barely enough for expenses.
They did not take any wedding photographs because they had no money. But the
Chen family borrowed 10,000 RMB to send to the Gou family as the betrothal
present in accordance with the tradition in northwestern China.
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