From Red Carpet to Dirt Road

The engagement had to be ended, and her fiance arranged the grounds for it himself. He had her caught in bed with another man, and it worked. The woman this happened to was a village woman of the 1980s called Xu Yan. She was also Xu Yan the star, who had ended up in that life without meaning to and had to learn the rules of it as she went. To protect herself she said on the spot that she would marry the man she had been caught with. He seemed to have nothing going for him, though he turned out to be Li Qifeng, who ran the No. 1 steel mill and had kept that quiet because of a job he had been given. He explained it to her while kneeling on a washboard. From there the two of them worked their way through the hard years together, Xu Yan handling what came at her on nerve and her own judgment.