Summary
There was a couple in our village who had been married for years without having a child.
One morning, as snow fell thick and fast, the woman thought she heard a baby crying.
She opened the door. On the ground lay a baby girl wrapped in an old quilt, wailing.
The woman fed her some rice water, then carried her around the village, asking at every house. No one knew who had left her there.
The villagers all said the same thing.
“You haven’t got children anyway. If someone left her at your door, she must be a gift from heaven. Keep her. You’ll have someone to look after you when you’re old.”
The woman looked down at the baby, now sleeping soundly in her quilt, and nodded.
“She’s my daughter from now on.”
That baby was me.
The young couple were my mom and dad, Chen Lanying and Zhang Dali.
They treated me as their own. I never imagined they weren’t my birth parents.
Until four years later, when Mom unexpectedly became pregnant.
People in the village began saying to me, half in jest:
“Once your mom and dad have a child of their own, they won’t want you anymore.”