The chapter opens with a flashback to the time when the Ming family was in mourning. The Ming family had lost all of their money and property, and the eldest son of the family had been killed in a gambling accident. The narrator tells us that this is because of a woman from the Ming clan who sold the Mings off and gave birth to an illegitimate child. The daughter of the woman has been raised by a son who gambles and drinks excessively. The father of the son is a pigheaded person, the narrator says. The family decides to stay in the small town and look after the orphaned child. They will make food for the child every day, and they will visit the old man in the village who is looking for the Ming girl. The old man is still alive, but he has mortgaged all of his property to pay off his gambling debts. The little girl tells her father that she will leave the next day. She tells him that her mother's relative has died, and that her father's son is missing and has been taken into the gambling den. She asks her grandmother to look for her mother, and she reminds her grandmother that she sold her mother off when the girl was younger. She says that she is still her grandmother and that the Ming people are benevolent.