At 11 p.m., Ling called her mother’s WeChat video. It took a while before her mother answered it. Ling said, “Mom, it’s late. Stop watching TV series. You should take a good rest. You have to get up at seven o’clock tomorrow to work.”

Ling’s mother said, “I’m not sleepy. The more I watch, the more refreshed I am.” After that, she hung up the video.

Ling could imagine her mother curling up on the sofa, binge-watching the romantic drama. Her mother would be so immersed in the love-hate relationship between the hero and heroine while her father was snoring on the bed in the bedroom.

Ling’s mother became obsessed with romantic dramas two years ago. She told Ling, “If I had known the TV series was so good, I wouldn’t have married your father.” Ling understood that her mother got happiness and satisfaction from watching the drama, fulfilling a certain hunger in her mother’s spirit.

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Ling’s mother was the eldest daughter in the family, with three younger brothers. She took on all the house chores since she was six. After she worked in the factory, her parents demanded that she hand over her wages because her brothers hadn’t married yet.

At the age of 20, Ling’s mother chose to marry to get rid of her family. She and Ling’s father only met three times before marriage.

For as long as Ling could remember, the relationship between her parents had been estranged. Her father drove a truck to deliver long-distance goods and was seldom home. Whenever her father gave her mother money for living expenses, he would check the household ledger her mother kept. While he interrogated her mother for every payment in the living room, Ling was doing homework at the dinner table. Ling could feel her mother’s embarrassment.

Once during the Spring Festival, when her mother asked her father, who was playing cards with relatives, to have dinner, her father dragged her into the room. Ling, only 10, dashed into it to stop her father and saw him kicking and slapping her mother.

When Ling was 14 years old, she asked her mother to divorce. Her mother refused because she believed a divorce would affect Ling’s studies; she would consider it only after Ling was admitted to a university. When Ling mentioned it again the summer before she left for college, her mother refused because she feared no one would want to marry Ling if they knew she came from a broken family.

Ling knew that the marriage life had woven a breathless airtight cage, imprisoning her mother for over thirty years.

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Four years ago, Ling’s father had an accident while driving the truck, and he had recuperated at home. He became more irritable, cursing and yelling every day.

Ling’s mother’s factory was closed two years ago because of poor economic performance. Ling encouraged her mother to take the opportunity to live with her in her city. While Ling was at work, her mother would watch TV to kill time. Gradually, her mother became addicted.

Ling told her mother to go for a walk in the park, but her mother always said yes and turned on the TV the moment Ling left for work. Ling thought that if her mother had a job, she would socialize with her colleagues and not spend all her time before TV, so she advised her mother to find a part-time job. However, her father’s injured leg deteriorated. So, her mother went home and worked four hours a night in the restaurant. Whenever her mother was at home, her father would insult her, and she chose to work for another four hours in the morning.  

Once when video-chatting with her mother, Ling found her mother always blinked her eyes and guessed her mother must have marathoned the drama. She would often call her mother to remind her to rest. But Ling knew that after hanging up the phone, her mother would start watching the drama again.

Ling understood that romantic dramas were a refuge for her mother, where she could have beautiful dreams and be unconditionally loved by the handsome and rich male protagonist. She also indulged in romance novels while looking for a job during her senior year in college. After being immersed in the plot, she was taken to another world where she could forget the pain and bitterness of reality.

Ling once asked her mother to stop watching TV dramas, or she would go blind and even die suddenly. Her mother said, “If I don’t watch TV, what else can I do? Talk to your father?” Ling wanted her mother to live with her, but her mother said, “What about your father? Leave him alone to die?” Ling didn’t know how to respond to her.

Ling blamed herself for her mother’s obsession. With fewer job opportunities in the county, she couldn’t afford to leave her job in the big city, and she couldn’t stay with her mother.

Whenever Ling and her mother talked on the phone, her mother kept bringing up what happened to the protagonists of the TV series. Ling did not understand the plot but wanted to communicate with her mother. She began to watch the series, so she could talk with her mother. Gradually, their call time turned from two minutes to half an hour. When her mother laughed, Ling would tell her about her daily life, pulling her into the real world.

Perhaps, Ling thought, it was not bad that she connected with her mother in this virtual companionship.

– Huina Zheng