On her sixteenth birthday, Shen Mo made a bowl of noodles and ate alone in the kitchen. Her foster mother took her younger brother to a restaurant, turning back to leave the remark, "There's leftover rice in the pot." She put down her chopsticks, opened an old booklet, wrote down the final stroke, and left carrying a bundle. Nine years, three hundred and seventy-two strokes. Her brother ate chicken legs while she ate cabbage; her brother had new clothes while she wore old ones. She recorded them stroke by stroke, not to hold a grudge, but to remember that she owed the Shen family nothing. After leaving the Shen family, she went from setting up a stall to sell embroidered handkerchiefs, to becoming the master needle artisan of the Su Embroidery Workshop, and finally the head of the Moji Embroidery Workshop.