It was a cold winter night at around ten, Wu Ping said this to me with a self-mocking laugh. Different from Wu Ping, her husband Yao Xinhai rarely talked or smiled. A while ago he left with his grandchildren to sleep and turned off the television—the dark living room became quiet and even more bleak. Wu Ping sat across from me, with one of her hands on her forehead and her eyes on the floor. Her face looked spiritless and eyes sunken. I asked if she had a headache or felt tired. She forced a smile and shook her head. Her voice was evidently lower than in the daytime when she busied herself in endless farming and domestic works. She sounded exhausted. Or even worse, behind such exhaustion, there was a sense of despair that she struggled to hide. Then, I could not bear to ask any more questions and urged her to have some rest though she told me she “cannot fall asleep anyway”.