City girl flees after spending 3 dreadful days with her boyfriend’s rural family
She told her boyfriend that she didn’t realize how cold and remote the countryside would be
A recent trip back to the countryside to introduce his rural parents to his new “uptown” girlfriend didn’t quite go as planned for one poor guy.
26-year-old Zhao Zhengkai was born in a small village outside of Handan in northern Hebei province. However, he went to college in the megacity of Chongqing, where he decided to stay to work after graduation. There, he met and eventually wooed a beautiful Chongqing-native named Xiao Gu, who also worked in his office.
Over the Spring Festival holiday, Zhao decided that it was time to take his pretty and fashionable girlfriend back to his home village to meet and impress his parents and relatives. What could go wrong?
Turns out, pretty much everything. As the Chongqing Morning Post describes, the first night, arriving late at his parent’s village home, Xiao Gu quietly complained to Zhao that she didn’t expect the place to so cold and remote.
The following morning, the family was visited by neighbors and relatives bringing good wishes for the new year. Many of the visitors commented on how good-looking Xiao Gu was, making Zhao’s family happy and giving them lots of face.
But from there, things started to go downhill — fast. While the women in the family huddled up in the kitchen to make dumplings, Xiao Gu refused to participate, instead staying plopped down on the sofa with her eyes glued to her phone, finding the kitchen to be too cold and smelly for her tastes.
She also didn’t help out with any of the housework, earning herself the disapproval of her boyfriend parents, along with their passive-aggressive complaints.
“My mom and dad both say that you’re lazy. You still have to work hard to earn their approval,” Zhao told his girlfriend.
According to Zhao, Xiao Gu said to him that she had tried her best to make things work. She pointed out that she hadn’t complained to his parents about the cold or about the bad tasting meals that they served up, and that she had tried to do what she could to make his parents like her. She insisted that she simply couldn’t get used to the cold and the conditions in the countryside.
With the friction in the home becoming unbearable, Xiao Gu decided to depart the village early, on the third day of the Chinese New Year. She and Zhao haven’t spoken to each other since. Zhao’s family have suggested that he forget about her.
The story has stirred up a storm on Chinese social media, some have blamed Xiao Gu for being too stuck up and stubborn, others have said that Zhao’s family are the rude ones, asking too much from their guests. However, it seems that most can agree that the couple should probably just break up, as the divide in China between urban and rural can often be too vast to bridge.
A similar story made the rounds on Chinese social media a few Spring Festivals ago, regarding a woman from a well-off Shanghai family who dumped her boyfriend from rural Jiangxi province after seeing the “humble” dishes offered by his family for Chinese New Year dinner.
The story ended up being fake news, but left a lasting impression in the minds of many.
“Actually, whether the story is true or not is no longer important. This story could turn into an unending hot topic, poking fun at society’s problems, the disparity between rich and poor, regional disparity, the social hierarchy, there are too many points, it’s sufficient to say that our society has a lot of problems, running into some points will lead to uproar, even if this point is fake,” wrote one web user.
