The story of Xianglin Sao, downtrodden by her in-law family and the towns people she worked for, reminds of the first part of Kong Xiu's life as the wife of a farmer whose family expects her to toil at home and in the fields, and give birth to male heirs. But the fate of Kong Xiu is kinder; there are no wolves to take away her son, she only has to give him up to the farmer's family, and be content with caring for a daughter. It's a hard life in both movies, but the fate of women does seem to have improved a bit since the 1956 adaptation of Lu Xun's tragic short story.
