My surname is Wang, and my name is Wang Zhao Di.

I have lived in a big mountain since I was a child, with my elderly parents and several sisters.

Just by hearing my name, you can tell how eager my parents were to have a younger brother.

Finally, after a few years and another sister, they had a boy.

This boy was not easy to come by, so my parents treasured him dearly and didn't let him do any farm work.

But this precious boy was avoided like the plague by all the sisters.

Although I was only five years old, I was just as afraid of him as my sisters were.

Because everything in the family had been too strange during the pregnancy with this male fetus.

My younger sister disappeared, my father became irritable and restless, and my mother developed a voracious appetite.

When my mother was three months pregnant, our usually poor family started to have meat on the table more frequently.

I often ran to the kitchen to look, and the meat in the big pot was boiling and aromatic.

My sister who was cooking would cry while stirring the meat broth, her tears leaving clean marks on the dusty stove.

My sisters never touched the meat on the table, but my mother ate heartily, and my father kept serving her meat.

I watched eagerly; the aroma was too enticing for my young self to resist.

While my father wasn't paying attention, I secretly scooped and drank a ladle of the broth.

Ah, so this is what meat tastes like.

But why didn't my sisters eat any?

This confusion didn't last long because I saw the bruises on my sisters' bodies.

They must have stolen some meat and got beaten by our father.

When my mother gave birth, it turned out to be a boy.

Both my father and mother were overjoyed, and I was happy too.

I thought that while mother was pregnant with my brother, we could occasionally eat meat. So, could there be even more meat after he was born?

But there wasn’t; for a long time, there was no more meat in the house.

I shared my confusion with my eldest sister.

She glared at me and said viciously, "There will never be meat again!"

I cried, partly because my sister was so fierce and partly because I was sad I wouldn't have meat to eat.

I secretly resented my eldest sister but missed the trace of pity in her eyes.

I didn't hate my eldest sister for long; as my brother grew, the number of my sisters dwindled.

When my brother was two, my eldest sister got married.

When my brother was four, my second eldest sister also got married.

……

As more of my sisters got married, the family's situation improved.

At that time, I didn't know the term "selling daughters"; I only knew that their departure reduced the family's burden.

But my parents were no longer satisfied with just one son.

They wanted a second one.

They then set their sights on me.

On the day my eldest sister got married, she told me the secret about my brother.

The village elders had said that the inability to have a boy was because previous girls had blocked the boy's fortune. If a pregnant woman ate a girl, the boy's blocked fortune would be restored, and naturally, he would arrive.

Ah, so it wasn't meat I ate, but my sister.

My eldest sister urged me to run away and escape this family.

But it was almost too late; my parents had already set their sights on me.

My father watched me more and more strictly.

But I didn't expect it; the eldest sister I loathed returned from her husband's home.

When she came back, she still had the familiar bruises of my childhood. I still resented her a little.

But I didn't expect my eldest sister to take me and flee that house overnight.

She gave me some scattered change and sent me away from that mountain, telling me to go far.

Then she went back without looking back.

I don't know why she went back; maybe her child was still there, or maybe her husband was still there.

But to this day, I believe what awaited her there was not worth her return.