The narrator and his father borrow a donkey and mule from their great-uncle, who tells them that it will cost them ten taels to borrow them and two taels each to buy them. The narrator's father is not a scholar and his mother is an in-law who has been adopted by her grandfather's cousin. She has had a hard life and now she is adopted under his late cousin's late grandfather. She is a good-for-nothing girl, but she will not stop until she gets her meat. She tells her aunt that her donkey has been hit by her mother, and she tells her that her aunt wants to kill the donkey. She also tells her mother that she has gone overboard, and that zhihua still is her elder. She says that if people do not offend her, then she will still do so, but if they do offend me, she will have to offend them again. She blames her parents for raising the donkeys this way, and says that they sold her mother for their own sake. He tells his father that the donkeys belong to him and that he will be able to repay his debts with them. He says that his father heard that his grandfather was sick and borrowed the donkeys to cross the mountains to come to his house. Now, his uncle is trying to sell off his donkey to pay off his own debts, and the narrator says that it is no wonder that the wife of dazhuang ran away.