"Shen Mingxiu and Shen Mingyi, right?"
"I think those were the names. I can't quite remember... There were two sons. The elder, Shen Mingxiu, was the ancestor of our branch, and Shen Mingyi belonged to the other branch. My mother said maybe things didn't go well for Shen Mingyi's branch because so many daughters had died. There was a story—she didn't know whether she'd heard it from the adults when she was little or somewhere else—that Shen Mingyi had actually been a twin, and there was a baby girl too. The girl came out first. His great-grandfather was furious. When the midwife showed him the baby, he waved his hand and knocked her onto the ground. The baby stopped breathing."
"The baby girl died?"
"Yes, that must have been how she died. The story had been passed down for a long time."
"Then what happened to Shen Mingyi?"
"Shen Mingyi was still in the womb at the time. The midwife was frightened too, and a little... Well, people probably added details to the story later. When my mother told it, she used that sort of tone, too. Some people in the family must have thought that the ancestor was extremely sexist. A girl came out first, and he didn't know there was another baby in the womb. After that mishap, things were difficult for the midwife and the mother. Shen Mingyi was stuck in the womb for a long time. When my mother told me about it, she said the mother didn't even dare cry, and trembled with fear. The midwife thought the whole thing was unlucky and wasn't very kind, either. You could hear the ancestor yelling at his wife from the courtyard—I'm not sure she was his wife, actually—and the midwife shouting inside the room. It went on