Bitter Marriage: 60-Day Covert Reporting of the "Undercover Heroine"

Author: Tu Qiao
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2004-11-01
Features: "The mistress" is an objective reality, and for many years, it has been a taboo subject that "can only be done but not written about." This group or individual has always been in a state of "lockdown." It is a kind of "abnormal" union between men and women that everyone knows exists but cannot clearly explain its origins or consequences. This book is Tu Qiao's follow-up to You Cannot Stop, focusing on the fate of women in marriage, another. Hong Kong's Wen Wei Po senior reporter Tu Qiao is widely known as the "undercover female hero." The book comprehensively records Tu Qiao's 60-day undercover investigation into the living community of women in a certain area who are kept as mistresses. It genuinely and movingly reveals the thoughts, feelings, current situations, and bewildered futures of this special group, and in the form of night reading notes, presents to readers the historical fate of Chinese women in marriage, provoking deep reflection. Why are you crying, Miss Zhang? On January 13, 2001, ten days before the Chinese New Year in the Year of the Snake, migrant workers who had been working in Shenzhen began to return to their hometowns in mainland China for the holiday. From this day forward, I adopted a pseudonym and conducted an undercover investigation, dragging two or three pieces of luggage and moving into a small unit apartment by the Shenzhen River in a certain village (for the sake of convenience and to avoid unnecessary trouble, I call it Bay Village). After a brief tidy-up, it was already 12 o'clock noon. The village I refer to is not the traditional kind surrounded by green mountains, clear waters, and fields, but rather an urban village or part of a city street. It is merely treated differently in urban planning and still retains some rural-style architectural clusters. With the rapid development of Shenzhen, the original villages could not keep up with the construction, resulting in many patchwork villages. On the main road of Bay Village, there was a tea restaurant where I bought a bowl of congee rice. Hong Kong people, inspired by the British love for afternoon tea and their dietary habits, have opened a type of Hong Kong-style tea restaurant on the island. After Shenzhen was designated as a special economic zone, some Hong Kong people introduced such restaurants with Western culinary characteristics to the city. It was noon, and the tea restaurant was not as noisy as a typical Chinese restaurant. Looking out through the spotless large glass windows, the clean and prosperous streets were relatively empty, with only a few young women carrying bundles of fresh vegetables and one or two Hong Kong visitors who had just come out. The aroma of the congee rice was enticing. Suddenly, a young woman entered, wrapped in a chill. She was petite, with short hair, wearing a pink and white cotton pajama set and an eye-catching yellow space coat, the combination of which was quite amusing. She went to the counter, told the shop owner about the takeout, and sat down in a chair waiting for it to be packed. At this moment, I couldn't eat my meal in peace; her behavior made me feel uneasy. She kept glancing nervously outside the door, her eyes somewhat fearful, as if a big gray wolf might rush in and bite her at any moment. When she wasn't looking outside, she just lowered her head and seemed to be lost in thought. Between glances, I could see a scratch near the eyelid of her left cheek, as if someone had scraped it with their nails. About ten minutes later, the shop owner brought her two rice packets. Just as she took the packets, the glass door flung wildly, and a sturdy middle-aged man rushed in, giving the young woman two loud slaps and cursing in Cantonese, "You bitch, what the hell are you doing? Cheating on me with someone else? I'll kill you, bitch!" Amidst the man's insults, the woman's cries, and the shop owner's attempts to mediate, the other diners gradually caught on to what was happening. The middle-aged man was a Hong Kong container truck driver. Last week, while driving to Meilin to pick up goods, he suddenly saw this young woman and a young man coming out of a supermarket, and he flew into a rage. He went back to his rented home in Bay Village, waited for her to return, and then started beating and shouting at her, grabbing her face fiercely. Today, after completing his delivery, he returned home and found her missing again, along with two cigarette butts in the ashtray, making him even more suspicious of her infidelity. The young woman was in tears, pleading innocence. The young man she had seen in Meilin before was her younger brother. The cigarette butts today were left by a Sichuan girl who smoked. The middle-aged man didn't believe her, and angrily recounted to everyone how he had supported her by feeding and clothing her, only to have her cheat on him. He couldn't help but wish she were dead. Gradually, the young woman's wails turned into intermittent sobs, her eyes dull and lifeless, filled with sadness and despair. The restaurant, which originally had an elegant British gentlemanly atmosphere, was now in chaos, ruining my appetite. I quickly paid and left. It was clear that the young woman was a mistress kept by the middle-aged man. Suddenly, I remembered the purpose of my undercover investigation and rushed back to the tea restaurant, only to accidentally meet the young woman coming out with swollen eyes. I wanted to stop her and ask, but didn't know what to say. She looked at me coldly and quickly walked away, leaving me with a gaunt figure in her wake. Generally, a woman who is a mistress would not agree to media interviews, especially not in such a situation. I could only patiently wait, stay there for a few days, and perhaps become friends with the mistress to uncover the truth. Today, the music playing in the tea restaurant was not the Cantonese opera or Hong Kong pop songs usually heard in places like this, but rather the saxophone rendition of "Home." Oh, home. Home.