My heart is empty & my life has no value anymore. Each moment a thousand tears.

She loves you. She's just forgotten how to show it.

In every message she spoke of birds, of flight, of the world away. Even back then, she flew against what was presented to her. I wanted to cling to her wings and soar, no matter how intimidated I was.

And often it would be a woman who was in her 70s or 80s who would win the beauty contest, because bound feet never age.

I think sometimes as an adult, you take people for what they do, and what they are now, instead of the whole picture of their lives.

There is no life without death. That is the true meaning of yin and yang

Our words had to be circumspect. We could not write anything too negative about our circumstances. This was tricky, since the very form of a married woman's letter needed to include the usual complaints -- that we were pathetic, powerless, worked to the bone, homesick, and sad. We were supposed to speak directly about our feelings without appearing ungrateful, no-account, or unfilial.