When I knew I couldn't suffer another moment of pain, and tears fell on my bloody bindings, my mother spoke softly into my ear, encouraging me to go one more hour, one more day, one more week, reminding me of the rewards I would have if I carried on a little longer. In this way, she taught me how to endure — not just the physical trials of footbinding and childbearing but the more torturous pain of the heart, mind, and soul.

Mama used to tell us a story about a cicada sitting high in a tree. It chirps and drinks in dew, oblivious to the praying mantis behind it. The mantis arches up its front leg to stab the cicada, but it doesn't know an oriole perches behind it. The bird stretches out its neck to snap up the mantis for a midday meal, but its unaware of the boy who's come into the garden with a net. Three creatures—the cicada, the mantis and the oriole—all coveted gains without being aware of the greater and inescapable danger that was coming.

I wonder if there was anything I would have done differently. I hope I would have done everything differently, except I know everything would have turned out the same. That's the meaning of fate.

People write to me all the time, and I write back.

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.

Let those who believe, believe. Let those who doubt, doubt.

Snow Flower was my old same for life. I had a greater and deeper love for her than I could ever feel for a person who was my husband.