The New Year's Sacrifice
A visitor home for the new year is stopped in the street by a beggar woman who asks whether the dead have souls, and hears from his host's household how she came to be one. Twice widowed and once carried off to a second marriage against her will, Xianglin's wife told the story of her son so often that the kitchen learned to cut her off, and paid for a temple threshold to be trodden on in her place. Lu Xun's sharpest account of what custom does to a woman who outlives her use.
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