I need to elaborate about the stone that sets off the war.
In feudal China, the felial system was so sanctified that anyone above you could do anything to you and you could do nothing about it. This led to a misperception about the limits of the human being to endure. Children would be taken from their mothers and given to superior wives, aunts, or sisters of other mothers and a woman could do nothing about it. Sometimes she would have done everything right and she would lose her child because it was her first and her husband made her a widdow before it was born. Then people in her family would not want to suport her and her child so they would take the child and if people didnt know who she was, they would demote her to a servant in the house. This was usually just the begining of the torments, especially since they would often teach the child to be very disrespectful to her. Then the child would have children, and she was not allowed to even think of them as grandchildren. The theives would have status that was growing all the time, and she would be getting more worn and hopeless as the years go by.
People who survived this long in this situation were often helpful to others in the same situation because they had enough patience to endure. Really in most cases where this happened the woman would be too upset and they would have to cast her out of the family house to wander the streets as a vagrant. Or they would sell her as a prostatute but that only happened in later times after opium became abundant and westerners wanted strung out women. Most asian prostatutes in the past were really women who wanted that kind of work rather than the obligation of a household. The current situation is a deep degeneration.
Anyway when our hero finally lost it, many people had seen what had happened to so many women and men who tired of all the lies finally went over the edge. What was left of them was too horrible to imagine. And by now people have some understanding of her story because for years now little puffs of steam have been escaping, a comment here, and gesture there, and people were starting to figure out what had happened. So when she finally does something that will end her if the authorities are allowed at her, the thought of it alone is enough to get the rest of the neigborhood into a frenzy.
In the US there are women in this situation. But for a different reason. Their families, or more often adopted families were using them in prostatution before puberty and puberty snuck up and they got preagnant. Some family member claimed the child for themselves, and in some cases arranged for more children and sold further children to others. The woman was forced to forget this was happening under threat of brain surgery. When she turned 18 or legal 18 if she was adopted and her age was changed, she tried to leave home, but the family was so afraid she would remember and tell they went around telling people she was a liar, a slut, a prostatute, diseased or whatever it took to make people have no simpathy for her. The did not tell people they were her family. They didnt want her to get an education. They dont want her to have a job and whenever she lives anywhere they try to ruin it for her so that her neighbors hate her and wont let her stay or rent anywhere else.
The police wont listen to her, social services wont help her. No matter what she does it cant counteract the trouble her family can cause. Meanwhile her family is telling people they love her and worry about her and want the best for her, but then they go to where she lives and rev their engine all night to let the town know that they will not stop until she is driven onto the streets, sold into slavery, dead, or lebotomized and instatutionalized.
