Actually, Lu Qingqing found it a bit unbelievable.
At the beginning of the eighties, after an era of turmoil, the university admission rate was frighteningly low. Those who could be admitted to Capital University were both intelligent and emotionally strong. Back then, the educational level of the general population was quite low; even high school was considered a high level of education. Even if wasted in a remote mountain village for seven or eight years, one's education would not be lost among the masses. How then could Tao Ye's mother have ended up in a slum?
"Was she unwell?" That was the only explanation.
If her health was poor and she couldn't work, requiring expensive medical treatment, she wouldn't be able to afford a house in Hong Kong, so she lived in a slum.
There was no helping it; the housing prices in Hong Kong were just too high, at the top of the world, with over half of its residents unable to afford their own home in their entire lifetime.