Many Tears are Love 一颗颗眼泪都是爱

Description:

The story begins in the early 1980s. In a certain coastal city in the north.
Liu Ru-Yan and Wan Shu-Lin were both workers at the same state-run printing and dyeing mill. Married for five years, they still had no child, and the couple quarreled about it more than once. Wan Shu-Lin called Liu Ru-Yan a "hen that doesn't lay eggs" and even threatened to divorce her and find another woman who could bear children. Liu Ru-Yan felt deeply wronged and heartbroken, and went to her sister to pour out her grief. Her sister Liu Ru-Mei worked at a hospital and sympathized greatly with her, suggesting that the couple get examined to find the cause of their infertility. But for one thing, such examinations were not yet common at the time, and for another, Wan Shu-Lin prized his reputation and stubbornly refused to go. Liu Ru-Yan had no choice but to seek out folk remedies to aid conception and take them — and indeed she seemed to become pregnant. Wan Shu-Lin was overjoyed. To care for his wife, he even planned to give up a rare training opportunity. Liu Ru-Yan urged him to put work first, saying that neighbors and her sister would look after her, so nothing would go wrong. And so it was: when Wan Shu-Lin returned from his business trip, he learned that Liu Ru-Yan had given birth to a baby girl named Jia-Ni. He was disappointed, because what he wanted with all his heart was a son. Just then the state had declared family planning a national policy and strictly limited second children, so his hope for a son was completely dashed. In his irritation, he abandoned Liu Ru-Yan and their daughter, played cards and drank all night, and even fooled around with a female worker in his workshop, He Li-Na. Liu Ru-Yan could not bear it and resolutely left him with their daughter. Later, through an introduction by their neighbor Hao Wei-Dong from the factory design office, she met Bai Shao-Xing, an engineer at an electric motor plant. At their very first meeting, Liu Ru-Yan stated that she did not want to find a stepfather for her daughter: she would agree to date him only if he promised to raise her daughter as his own and agreed that they would have no more children. Bai Shao-Xing agreed readily. Unexpectedly, not long after they married, Liu Ru-Yan discovered she was pregnant! Bai Shao-Xing was an ethnic minority, and under the policy this child could be born — so should they have it or not? In the end, comforted by her husband, she set aside her worries, checked into the maternity ward, and safely gave birth to a boy.
In the same ward was another woman who had given birth to a girl, a teacher named Hua Hong-Ying. According to her, she had once had a daughter who was later lost in the hospital, so she had to have another. Because this was not her first delivery, she recovered quickly, took great care of Liu Ru-Yan, and was very fond of Jia-Ni. Her husband Yang Ming-Liang was a cadre in the electrical and mechanical bureau and happened to be Bai Shao-Xing's direct superior; the two also got along well. But Liu Ru-Yan avoided the couple Hua as if they were the plague, leaving Bai Shao-Xing baffled. He did not know that Jia-Ni, whom he was raising as his daughter, was the very baby girl that Hua Hong-Ying and Yang Ming-Liang had lost in the hospital maternity ward years ago! It turned out that at the time, Liu Ru-Yan, thinking she was pregnant, went to the hospital for an examination, but the doctor told her it was a false pregnancy. Liu Ru-Yan could hardly bear the blow, and even less dared to tell her husband the truth, so she had no choice but to turn to her sister for help. Liu Ru-Mei advised her to simply pretend to be pregnant, and when the time came she would find an abandoned baby to pass off as her own. But when it was nearly time to "give birth," the child still had not been found. In utter desperation, she took advantage of the chaos during feeding time and snatched one at random. From the wristband on the baby, Liu Ru-Yan learned that the child's mother was named Hua Hong-Ying. She had kept this wristband carefully all along. Now, as fate would have it, they had run into each other. Though the others knew nothing and remained warm toward her and her daughter, she herself had a guilty conscience — how could she let her daughter get close to this family?
Fortunately, the secret buried deep in her heart was never exposed. Many years passed, and she and Bai Shao-Xing had both retired, their children grown up. After finishing graduate school, Jia-Ni went to work at Yang Ming-Liang's company and was deeply in love with Hao Ning, Hao Wei-Dong's son. Life was peaceful and leisurely. But one day, her ex-husband Wan Shu-Lin, from whom she had parted years ago, suddenly showed up at her door, questioning Jia-Ni's origins. It turned out that Wan Shu-Lin and He Li-Na had been married for years without children and had ultimately divorced, yet after He Li-Na remarried, she quickly bore a son. This had always troubled her. Now that Wan Shu-Lin knew her second husband had died and proposed remarriage, she insisted that he get examined by an andrologist. The results proved that Wan Shu-Lin was born incapable of fathering children! So Jia-Ni's origins naturally became a big problem. The shrewd He Li-Na immediately realized she could use this to extort Liu Ru-Yan, and demanded fifty thousand yuan in "hush money" from both Liu Ru-Yan and the man they assumed was her "paramour," Hao Wei-Dong. Hao Wei-Dong was completely bewildered and urgently contacted Liu Ru-Yan. Seeing that she had dragged an innocent good man into this, yet not daring to reveal Jia-Ni's true origins, Liu Ru-Yan had no choice but to agree to their terms and took fifty thousand yuan from the family's modest savings to give to He Li-Na.
Bai Shao-Xing noticed that his wife's mood and behavior were abnormal, and learned from their son Bai Shan that she had touched the family savings, but out of trust and love for his wife, he merely watched quietly and did not pursue the matter. It seemed the storm had passed. Unexpectedly, Yang Ming-Liang's daughter Hua-Mei (Jia-Ni's biological sister), who was also in love with Hao Ning and could not win him despite her pursuit, drove drunk in her depression and was severely injured in a crash, hovering between life and death. The grandmother, who had always doted on her granddaughter, suffered another onset of mental illness. Hua Hong-Ying and Yang Ming-Liang had to care for both the young and the old, nearly collapsing. In these circumstances, Liu Ru-Yan, disregarding her own prohibition, mobilized the whole family to help the Yangs through the crisis. Through their contact, she learned of the pain the Yang family had suffered after losing their child, and her conscience was deeply shaken. Several times she intended to confess everything, but fearing legal punishment and the loss of the hard-won happiness, she could not bring herself to speak the truth.
In their close contact with Liu Ru-Yan and her daughter, the Yangs not only deeply felt their kindness and the strength of their mother-daughter bond, but also noticed some suspicious points. Especially when, for Hua-Mei's blood transfusion, they learned that Jia-Ni's blood type was exactly the same as their daughter's rare blood type, yet did not match the blood types of Liu Ru-Yan and Wan Shu-Lin — they nearly concluded that this was their lost daughter! But they truly did not want to believe that the kind Liu Ru-Yan could do such a thing, and having learned that Jia-Ni's father might be someone else, they decided to remain silent.
Thanks to the meticulous care of Hua Hong-Ying and her husband and of Liu Ru-Yan and her daughter, Hua-Mei pulled through the critical danger, but when she learned that from then on she would be confined to a wheelchair, she was so devastated that she refused food and treatment. Liu Jia-Ni, knowing that she deeply loved Hao Ning, brought Hao Ning to visit Hua-Mei and secretly promised her that if Hua-Mei could recover, she would give up Hao Ning and set him free. Hua-Mei regained the courage to live and resumed eating and treatment. The grandmother's condition also improved and she regained consciousness. At this time, because He Li-Na intended to pocket the "hush money," Wan Shu-Lin in a rage revealed to Bai Shao-Xing that he was infertile and that Jia-Ni had been born to Liu Ru-Yan by another man. To Bai Shao-Xing this was like a thunderbolt from a clear sky — he could not believe that his deeply beloved wife, with whom he had lived for so many years, could do such a thing! He demanded that Liu Ru-Yan tell him the truth, or he would divorce her. Liu Ru-Yan did not utter a single word to him, but after making arrangements, she attempted suicide to atone. Fortunately, she was rescued. In the suicide note she left behind, people learned the truth: Jia-Ni was the daughter of Yang Ming-Liang and Hua Hong-Ying, and she had been taken from the hospital's baby cart years ago, with the wristband as proof.
How to view and treat Liu Ru-Yan? This became a test for everyone. Especially for Liu Jia-Ni: how should she treat this woman who had toiled to raise her for over twenty years, yet had forcibly separated her from her biological parents for over twenty years? For the Yang family, Liu Ru-Yan's actions had indeed caused them enormous pain and had indeed broken the law, but after more than twenty years and after deeply coming to know Liu Ru-Yan as a person, should they still file a lawsuit and pursue her criminal responsibility?
In the hospital ward, Liu Ru-Yan lies in bed quietly awaiting the judgment of fate.