one
One night in January 2024, I called a Didi and drove to Chengdu Financial City, where I met Chen Shu at a tea shop along the street.
At this time, it was close to the wax moon, and it was very early to get dark. The smog recedes most of the time at night, and the magnificent twin towers of the financial city constantly change the façade in the dark night, shining with golden light, like the Genting Heavenly Palace, quietly shining on the south gate of Chengdu.
At night, the financial city is far less hustle and bustle than Chunxi Road, the weather is cold that day, the streets are bleak, and the golden light of the Twin Towers makes this area look both prosperous and cold.
I stood at the door of the teahouse, glanced at the audience, and saw a snow-white woman sitting in the corner, thinking about what to think, thinking that she should be Chen Shu, so I went over to say hello.
She looked up at me, invited me to sit down, and we both began to greet each other politely.
At this time, the waiter came from the side and asked us to scan the code and order tea, I was not usually interested in studying these, so I ordered two pots of tea with a nice name.
Chen Shu was introduced by a friend, saying that her life experience can reflect the painful choices of some contemporary women in the workplace and life, "You can meet her and listen to her", so I made an appointment to meet her in the financial city.
The tea was quickly served, with a glass teapot on top, a small fire warm tea on the bottom, and two small biscuits, with a sense of ceremony that was very sufficient, and one person charged 128 yuan.
It's a fucking expensive place.
I poured myself a cup of tea, took out a notebook and pen from my backpack, and I said to Chen Shu:
Miss Chen, please tell us your story.
two
Chen Shu was born in May 1989 in Hongya County, Meishan City.
She had two relationships in high school, but each one only lasted two or three months before they broke up, and the second boyfriend was entangled with her for the rest of her life.
Chen Shu had good academic performance, he was admitted to a 211 in college, and after graduating from college, he signed a company with the school, but because he was often assigned, he couldn't stand this kind of rush, and resigned after working for a year. When he returned to Chengdu, he found a very good company, and in 2011, 23-year-old Chen Shu was able to get a salary of more than 10,000 yuan a month.
It was also in this year that Chen Shu's second boyfriend in high school caught up with him.
In the summer of 2011, the ex-boyfriend often came to her, saying that he wanted to "play friends and play together", and one weekend, he took her to the Jiuyan Bridge bar to play late at night, and when he sent her home, it was already twelve o'clock, just downstairs at her house, the ex-boyfriend pulled her to the entrance of the building, and took advantage of the alcohol to kiss her and beg her to get back together.
The two of them stood at the staircase and explained to each other the emotional experience of the past few years, neither of them is a fuel-efficient lamp, and they have not stopped falling in love in the past few years, but now they are in the window period.
Chen Shu was not too satisfied with this ex-boyfriend, he felt that his IQ was far inferior to his own, and the university he was admitted to was much, much worse than himself, but he couldn't stand the ex-boyfriend's soft grinding and hard bubbles, and grinded from twelve o'clock to six o'clock at the staircase, seeing that the sky was bright, Chen Shu really couldn't stand him, and he was soft-hearted for a while, so he agreed to deal with him first.
Chen Shu has a shortcoming, he is soft-hearted and cowardly, and he can't stand it when others beg him, and this kind of character hurts him a lot.
On the second day when they decided to go everywhere, her boyfriend was going to have dinner with her at noon, but she didn't expect that his mother and her boyfriend's colleagues were in the restaurant, which was considered to have met their parents, and the two officially established a relationship with the public.
Chen Shu is not interested in her boyfriend, she feels that she doesn't love this boyfriend very much, and she has a feeling that she is going to live a good life. I have a good impression of my mother, I think she is kind and kind, she is very easy to get along with, and I like this future mother-in-law very much.
Her boyfriend's parents are divorced, her boyfriend's mother has her own boyfriend, she doesn't know the life of her boyfriend's father, she only knows that she is a deputy director-level cadre in a super large state-owned enterprise, she has only seen her boyfriend's father in the first three years, and she feels that the other party is a person with a strong desire to control, and it is very difficult to get along.
This relationship lasted from 2011 to 2013, Chen Shu was very tired of her boyfriend, and always felt that the CPU of the other party's brain couldn't keep up with her, so she broke up many times.
Her mother encouraged them to get married, and went to her boyfriend's biological father to make trouble, asking the other party to pay for her son to buy a house, and finally asked for a down payment of 600,000 yuan to buy a house.
But Chen Shu still didn't want to marry into their family, she always felt that she didn't love this boyfriend and didn't want to live with him for the rest of her life.
In October 2013, my boyfriend's mother had back pain every day, and I didn't know what kind of disease she was doing, so she went to the hospital to check that she had cholangiocarcinoma, which had reached an advanced stage and metastasized to the liver.
I listened to the doctor's arrangement and did liver resection surgery.
When Chen Shu said this, he opened his hand and gestured on the table, which was about the size of a small piece of tofu. She said, cut such a large piece of liver down. Then she was silent for a while, looked at me and said, but she still couldn't save her life, and she died in April 2014.
A few months before he died, her boyfriend's mother knew that she couldn't save her, so she grabbed Chen Shu's hand on the hospital bed and said that she entrusted her son to her and asked her to take good care of her son.
That night in the hospital, still in the corridor, her boyfriend proposed to her, Chen Shu just cried non-stop, did not say yes, but did not dare to refuse.
In November 2014, less than a year after the death of her boyfriend's mother, Chen Shu married her boyfriend with wine and stumbled into marriage.
The official time for obtaining the certificate will be a few months later.
A week before her mother-in-law died, she did something very impactful, she went to register her marriage with her boyfriend.
also because of this hasty marriage, her mother-in-law left a bunch of troubles for Chen Shu.
But that's not the most troublesome, the most troublesome thing is that her father-in-law came into their lives.
叁
When Chen Shu talked about his ex-father-in-law, his face was full of anger that he couldn't hide.
Before her father-in-law appeared, although Chen Shu was not happy in marriage and was not very satisfied with her husband, she could still get by, and the appearance of her father-in-law directly crushed her original high-quality female white-collar life in Chengdu.
After Chen Shu's mother-in-law died, her father-in-law intervened in her life as the patriarch, and in June 2014, when Chen Shu was pregnant, her father-in-law took it upon himself to ask Chen Shu to change jobs.
Her father-in-law's reason is that although Chen Shu's current company has a high salary, he has signed a third-party labor dispatch contract, which is not a serious job, and he will use his own connections to operate his daughter-in-law into his own large enterprise.
After many years, when Chen Shu slowly recalled the past in the tea shop, she was already able to sort out the logic here.
Chen Shu said that the reason why her ex-father-in-law asked her to change jobs was mainly for two reasons, one was to show her ability in front of her and establish the prestige of her family, and the other was to suppress her, not wanting her daughter-in-law's salary to exceed that of her son.
Chen Shu's ex-husband works in the system, originally only more than 5,000 a month, and it only rose to more than 10,000 in 2016, while Chen Shu has always been more than 10,000 a month, and his economic income has surpassed that of his ex-husband.
Her father-in-law thinks that Chen Shu's economic income is too high and he is too strong at home, and he must beat her down.
In order to persuade Chen Shu, who was pregnant at the time, had not held a wedding banquet, and had not officially registered, to change jobs, her father-in-law began to stand on the moral high ground and accuse Chen Shu.
"If you don't change jobs, you're irresponsible to your family, and you're selfish. ”
"If you don't change jobs, our family won't care about this child, you can raise it alone. ”
In order to form a moral encirclement of Chen Shu, her father-in-law also went to Chen Shu's parents to do work, her parents were soft-eared, had no opinions, and couldn't withstand this lobbying, and finally the parents on both sides stood together and asked Chen Shu to change jobs quickly.
Chen Shu wanted to seek her husband's support, but her husband was less assertive than her parents, and he was extremely weak in front of his father, saying that he couldn't resist his father, but asked Chen Shu to obey his father's will.
Chen Shu was reluctant to take her current job, but she was isolated, her temperament was already a little cowardly, and she was depressed before she was born, so she cried every day, crying to the end, and she didn't see anyone who could help her, and she still obeyed her father-in-law's plan a month later.
When she really wanted to change jobs, she found that her father-in-law had no ability at all, and she couldn't enter that super-large enterprise at all, so her father-in-law found her a small unit in the same industry as that state-owned enterprise, and let her stay in it for a period of time as a springboard for changing jobs in the future.
Chen Shu's monthly income plummeted from 15,000 yuan a month to 3,800 yuan a month, and his position changed from the original management post to a technical post. From the original skilled type of work, to the technical work that I have never been exposed to.
With a big belly, you have to face a new job and a struggle of interests within the new company.
The department leaders of the new company were extremely dissatisfied with her, a related household that was shoehorned in, and let her sit on the cold bench for a year, not only with a low income, but also with the object of ridicule from others when she was in the company that year.
Her career was beaten down like this, and her father-in-law proudly told her that it was he who helped Chen Shu become a regular employee in the unit, and he was no longer a labor dispatch.
At that time, the family had a mortgage of 5,500 yuan a month, a car loan of 3,800 yuan, and a mortgage of more than 2,000 yuan left by the deceased mother-in-law, and the loan repayment was 10,300 yuan every month.
Chen Shu's father-in-law took matters into his own hands and lowered their family income, but was unwilling to help bear the burden of the family, which made Chen Shu spend a very painful few years financially.
At that time, the monthly household expenses were in deficit, and Chen Shu was under great financial pressure and lived a hard life for five years for no reason.
What made Chen Shu even more unbearable was her originally bright career, she was a graduate of a famous local school, but she had to start from a grassroots position and start again from the bottom, and her entire career was ruined.
So, why did Chen Shu's father-in-law have to suppress Chen Shu to such a point?
It took Chen Shu several years to fully understand the logic.
In the concept of her ex-husband's family, a woman's status must be lower than that of a man, and if she marries into her ex-husband's family, her economic income cannot be higher than theirs, and her social status cannot be higher than theirs.
In order to suppress her, if she can't make progress, she has to weaken Chen Shu and oppress Chen Shu.
And the women who marry into their families are all positioned as "giving up the workplace, doing laundry, cooking, taking care of children, and serving men".
In their concept, when there are guests at home, the man is responsible for chatting with the guests, and the woman must serve tea, pour water and wash the dishes, and cannot talk at the table, and the woman is nanny and slave.
In such a family, women cannot grow up, they must be honestly attached to the men in the family, and if the vitality is too active, they must be suppressed in advance preventively.
Her ex-husband's family hopes that his son will be Jackie Chan, and he has concentrated family resources to help his son grow up, but this son's level is too low, and he is inferior to his daughter-in-law in all aspects.
Marrying into this family is equivalent to jumping into a big pit, and Chen Shu must cut off his personal development in the economy and workplace.
Every time Chen Shu's father-in-law took his daughter-in-law out to dinner, when he talked about his own family, he would secretly poke and knock Chen Shu, and say to the full table: My daughter-in-law is very good in all aspects, but she is too strong.
Their grandmother, who has been PUA all her life, also helped Chen Shu's father-in-law to PUA Chen Shu, chatting in private, and always instilling obedience in Chen Shu:
"The men in our family never wash dishes, don't cook, don't do laundry, don't do any housework. ”
"He is so tired from working outside, he should lie down when he comes home, and we are women to let them lie down. ”
"Women are meant to serve men, and when they serve good men, men earn money outside, and they are good at home. ”
Even many years later, Chen Shu learned that the deceased mother-in-law she originally liked said to her father-in-law before she died that this Chen Shu is good at everything, but he reads too many books, his ability is too strong, and he is better than his son in all aspects, so he should have more eyes for her.
Several generations of Chen Shufu's family have acquiesced to the position of women: they cannot stand in front of men, cannot surpass men in any aspect, and can only be selfless and subservient to the men of the whole family.
But Chen Shu is an intellectual woman who graduated from 211, she has her own pursuit of her life, she may be confused and weak for a while to enter this position, and it is impossible for her to never resist for the rest of her life.
肆
In April 2015, Chen Shu gave birth to a son.
Since 2016, her family has frequently lobbied her to have another child.
The total contradiction between Chen Shu and her ex-husband's family broke out on the issue of the second child.
Chen Shu, who has fallen into an economic dilemma, refuses to regenerate no matter what.
Because of the first child, the husband's family kidnapped herself morally and ruined her career future, and if she had a second child, the consequences would be unimaginable.
This time Chen Shu resisted fiercely, and it was useless for her father-in-law to wear out his mouth.
By 2018, their family was also very impatient, and his husband did not use contraception when he had sex with her, and forcibly asked her to give birth regardless of whether Chen Shu wanted to or not.
In May 2018, Chen Shu's lower body continued to bleed and was accompanied by slight pain, she thought it was a menstrual problem, went to Shuangnan Hospital for an examination, and the result was judged to be chorionic cancer.
Choriocarcinoma, which is mostly related to fertility, is a highly malignant trophoblastic tumor that causes local destruction and then metastasizes throughout the body and causes rapid death.
After witnessing the death of his mother-in-law due to cancer, Chen Shu was full of fear of cancer, he didn't expect that he might die of cancer at such a young age.
In this period of life and death, her husband's family was only nervous once after learning the news, and then they lived a normal life, Chen Shu's parents were busy taking care of their grandson, and Chen Shu's husband came back every weekend (he was on a business trip all year round), he should eat, sleep, and play games.
Her father-in-law didn't even show up for a single meeting, and he was busy with his own business.
got such a serious illness, and later went to the hospital for a check-up, and Chen Shu went alone.
Chen Shu said that since then, she began to have extreme doubts about her choice of this marriage, she originally had a bright job and a good future, but for this marriage, no one cares about her even if she has to take her life.
She feels that she has become a family consumable, no longer the person who was full of vitality and yearning for life before marriage.
Thinking that he was about to die, thinking of his lost job, and thinking of all kinds of family oppression he had received after marrying, Chen Shu cried every night, often from 8 o'clock to 12 o'clock in the evening, crying until he was on the verge of depression again.
Because he was afraid of really getting cancer, Chen Shu began to think about whether to leave something for his young son after he died. She learned to write letters from the plot of the movie, and every time she wrote, she cried so much that she couldn't write at all, and she didn't know how many letters she should write properly, whether to write until the child was 18 years old or 28 years old.
What is pitiful is that Chen Shu went to West China Hospital for a follow-up examination for the sake of caution.
The doctors at West China Hospital are more experienced, and after reading the test sheet, they found that the reason why Chen Shu's HCG value is high is actually in addition to choriocarcinoma, and it may also be that the ectopic pregnancy is being miscarried. After a month of repeated index examinations, the doctor's guess was that the HCG value was too high due to the residual placental tissue in the body, and it was misdiagnosed as choriocarcinoma.
When Chen Shu's last inspection report showed that the indicators were normal, he cried with joy and walked home while crying.
After this narrow escape, Chen Shu made up his mind that if he did not have a second child, he would also divorce.
Her parents don't know how to love their daughter, her husband's family either directly treats her as a tool, or ignores her life and death, she can't bear to live in the world like this.
She sat across from the tea table, and when she said this, she looked at me quietly, her eyes resolute, but very calm, and said:
I used to be cowardly and ignorant to enter this suffocating marriage.
From now on, I will live for myself.
five
Chen Shu has decided to divorce in her heart, but she can't leave for the time being.
She has been away from her original career for too long, and after the divorce, she can't live on her current low salary, and she needs a way to live.
And her father-in-law, after waiting for more than four years for the good work arrangement, finally had a suitable opportunity to transfer her to a second-level unit of a large enterprise.
Chen Shu decided to endure it until the new job transfer was successful.
In the second half of 2019, after a long wait, Chen Shu finally successfully joined the new company and got her salary five years ago, and after the company's job was stable, in February 2020, she officially filed for divorce from her husband.
Chen Shu remembers this date very clearly, because at that time, Wuhan had just been locked down, and the whole country was extremely panicked because of the epidemic.
Her husband did not agree to the divorce, and chose to escape every time he encountered a major event, and this time it was the same, in order to avoid talking about divorce, he went to live in the unit for a whole month.
Later, I found that it was not a way to avoid it all the time, so I began to take the initiative to send a large paragraph of WeChat in a low voice, begging my wife not to divorce.
Chen Shu, who was already riddled with holes, was not moved at all.
Seeing that the soft grinding and hard bubbles did not work, the husband began to coerce, intimidate, and swear, and used all the tricks that could be used, Chen Shu became depressed and manic under the high pressure of divorce, and his weight plummeted by 10 pounds, and in order to stabilize his mood, he took antidepressants for another year, and his work and life were greatly affected.
After Chen Shu's father-in-law knew that she was going to divorce, he still asked Chen Shu to give a reasonable reason for the divorce like a leader, and he wanted to come to the door to talk.
Chen Shu calmly summarized the events of these years and wrote five pages of his marriage experience over the years.
After reading the information, Chen Shu's father-in-law took his son to Chen Shu's mother's house to negotiate, still talking condescendingly, in front of Chen Shu's parents, he held back his anger and asked Chen Shu, "Is this marriage inseparable? Is there any room for turnaround?" Chen Shu was extremely resolute and did not give any room for negotiation, so angry that her father-in-law slammed the door and walked out, and her ex-husband jumped up and scolded her for swearing.
The matter is in the second half of 2020, and the middle has experienced an extremely complicated bloody divorce plot, which also directly affects Chen Shu's husband's work, and his unit leaders came to understand the situation, Chen Shu submitted materials to them, and after the unit leaders learned about it, they took the initiative to persuade her husband to divorce.
For the sake of her own future, her husband finally agreed to divorce.
In 2021, after more than a year of hard work, Chen Shu and her ex-husband finally received a divorce certificate at the Civil Affairs Bureau.
On the day of the divorce, she had to pretend to be very polite to her ex-husband.
After getting the certificate, her ex-husband said that you are happy now, right?
Chen Shuqiang endured the joy in his heart and said that we will still be friends in the future.
Then they left the Civil Affairs Bureau and walked away.
Chen Shu suddenly walked from the dark and damp basement where he had been in the dark and damp basement for seven years to the flower-filled ground.
Since then, Chen Shu said, she has finally been herself.
The moment she got the divorce certificate, she was so happy, she was so happy.
After three years of divorce, she is getting better and better.
She can finally shine in the workplace, her income has increased several times, she can finally do her own hobbies, and she finally doesn't have to listen to other people's arrangements to have a second child.
She ushered in a new life.
I can finally live for myself.
land
One night in January 2024, I listened to Chen Shu's story at a tea shop in Chengdu Financial City.
At the end of the conversation, Chen Shu couldn't control his emotions and wiped his tears over and over again.
She didn't want to think about the details of her ex-husband's family that oppressed her, because every time she recalled it, she felt isolated, like a soulless person, walking to the beach step by step in the silent middle of the night, and finally sinking to the bottom of the sea, loneliness and despair surging into her heart.
It wasn't until twenty minutes had passed that her mood had calmed down, and the tea table was already full of tissues.
I put away the pen and notebook, took a sip of tea, and walked to the door of the tea shop with Chen Shu.
Chen Shu asked, do you believe everything I say?
I said that there are many people I interviewed, and I can feel that there may be some discrepancies in the details, but there should be no deviation in the overall macro level, which is the same problem that Chinese post-80s women often encounter after marriage.
What is the question asked by Chen Shu?
It is a conflict between the old concept of family and the positioning of contemporary intellectual women. I said, "The old family relationship prefers to suppress women, let women stand behind men, seriously and directly treat women as consumables, and silently dedicate their lives to the men in the family for life, and they can't show themselves to be stronger than the men in the family in any way."
Since the post-80s, because of the expansion of university enrollment, a large number of well-educated women have entered the society, they are smarter and more enterprising than some men, and they are never willing to become vassals of mediocre men. ”
Chen Shu stood at the door and thought for a while, she lowered her head and said, I think so too.
In the end, the two of us each called Didi and waved goodbye at the door of the tea house.
I walked head-on in the direction of the Petronas Twin Towers, and saw a golden light in the air in front of me, and when I looked back at Chen Shu, she had already gone in the night.
On that cold night, there were few pedestrians on the streets of the Financial City, and the golden light of the Twin Towers paved down on the wide sidewalks next to the office buildings and shopping malls.
The world is so prosperous and so deserted.