“Dahai, I raised you and your older sister up into adults. That took hard work. Please remember our old affections and help me plead for leniency to your mother. Don’t let her take away my soul…” Madam Zhang saw Yu Hai as her last chance for survival and entreated him piteously.

Old affections? Perhaps it was guilt or something else. Before Yu Bo was born, Madam Zhang treated him and his older sister pretty well. Everything they ate and wore was about the same as Yu Dashan’s. However, once Yu Bo started going to school, Madam Zhang forced Yu Hai, who was only thirteen at the time, to brave the dangers of hunting in the mountains. Not only did he have to give her all of the money, but he also had to do all of this on a half-empty stomach.

At the time, Yu Hai believed that the family was in poor financial shape, so every day he went into the mountains to catch hares and pheasants while hungry. Despite that, he couldn’t bear to eat a single morsel of meat that he caught and sold them all to subsidize the family’s income. Later on, he found out that the reason his whole family lived frugally was to save money for Xiaobo’s school tuition. Since he was purehearted and cared about his siblings, he worked even harder to learn hunting techniques from Older Brother Zhao. Thus, he managed...