Ni Cuihua is a bona fide country folk, deeply influenced by the tradition of favoring males over females, and has received no formal education from childhood.
As a child, her days were filled with picking pigweed and toiling in the collective farm to earn work points.
However, such conditions were not unique to Ni Cuihua. Many rural women her age were illiterate.
Some have even never stepped foot outside their county their entire life.
Read the alphabet?
Ni Cuihua was taken aback at first, then bursted out laughing, "At my age? Learn to read?"
Illiteracy was a significant problem and incredibly inconvenient.
Every time Ni Cuihua held out a stack of papers to ask Ni Yang which were important and which could be thrown away, it tugged at Ni Yang's heartstrings.
Especially in the advanced information-technology era, being illiterate was practically paralyzing.
If she was going to relive her life, Ni Yang wanted to change not only herself but also her mother.
