The Courtyard’s Pampered Wife in the 70s

Gu Shunhua realized she was a side character in a retro-era novel just as she was buying a roasted sweet potato in Dashilan Alley.
The familiar Beijing accent rang in her ears: “Are you buying it or not?”
She dropped the sweet potato and bolted straight for the train station. According to the novel’s plot, she would soon divorce her husband temporarily just to return to the city. But at the moment of divorce, her cousin Chen Lu would seize the chance to marry her ex-husband, bear him children, and bask in his rise to success—while her own twins would end up imprisoned for embezzling company funds. The book’s tone, full of superiority thinly veiled as pity, reads:
”Gu Shunhua wasn’t truly evil—just a little petty, a little shortsighted, the typical selfishness of a small-minded woman. Traumatized by her time in the countryside, she resorted to desperate measures just to return to the city… and lost a perfectly good marriage in the process.” Gu Shunhua: To hell with that! She charged back to the countryside, scooped her twins into her arms, and declared,
”Wherever Mama goes, you go too. The three of us will never be separated again!” Ren Jingnian, fiddling with the radio, looked up: “Why are you back already?”
Staring at the man who would one day dote on the novel’s heroine while ignoring his own children, Gu Shunhua straightened her back and said,
”You wish I’d never come back? Want to mistreat my son and daughter?” Ren Jingnian: “…?”
Gu Shunhua: “Fine, let’s divorce. I get the kids—you get the donkey.” Ren Jingnian: … What did I even do wrong? Meanwhile, Chen Lu—who admired her superior so much she wrote an entire romance novel inspired by him—also found herself transported into the book.
 Now, with the tide of Reform and Opening just beginning, the dashing young tycoon she modeled her hero after may be married, but he’s still full of promise…
She thinks: This is my chance! Only…
 Why haven’t they divorced yet?
 Why not yet?
 Why…
Why?!