"Did you hold a wedding at that time? Was there any ceremony?" Qiao Mei asked curiously.
"We did not have money to hold a wedding ceremony. Besides, who could we invite to the banquet? At that time, we didn't even have a marriage certificate. The two of us just felt that we could live together and so we did just that," Qiao Qiang said.
One year after Qiao Qiang got married, Qiao Zhuang also found himself a wife. He applied to get a piece of land as the location of his matrimonial home and borrowed money from all the families in the village to build the house. Rather than saying he borrowed money from everyone, it would be more accurate to say that he robbed everyone.
After Qiao Zhuang and Qiao Qiang started their own families, it was as if they had gone their separate ways. One lived at the east end of the village while the other lived at the west end of the village. They rarely interacted with each other.