Eric's Beijing Diary

Heart-rending story in today's paper about a woman who's husband urged a divorce on her because he could no longer support her due to his illness. She remarried but required her new husband to accept her continued care for her first husband. So now she takes care of two families.

This story reflects the nose-to-the-grindstone realism of countryside people in China. It tends to be the theme of Zhang Yimou's old movies (before he joined the martial arts craze). The characters in those movies deal with the trials of life by suffering through them.