Humans of China: "I Was Born in 1963, and Life Was Hard"

This article comes from Humans of China (WeChat ID: humans-of-china), which aims to document and tell the stories of the many varied people of this vast country, one individual at a time. 

For the first few years of my life, I had never eaten meat and I didn't know what an egg was. We had no money for food, and my diet consisted mostly of weeds. At a very young age, I started a very simple but important job as a wood collector to build fires during the winter as it was bitterly cold. At seven years old I started working in the fields using a hoe to move the soil and help grow rice.

The land was all owned by the government, and therefore the crops we grew also belonged to the government. After the rice was harvested, the local officials would come and collect the good rice and we were left with the bad rice. If we didn't grow enough then they would take other things such as livestock, the very little money we had, or other possessions like bikes or furniture.

We couldn't say anything and we had no choice but to give these things up. Back then everyone was the same we all had very hard lives. Although we were all so poor, everyone loved to help each other. No one was selfish, unlike in today’s society... there are too many selfish people nowadays.

Growing up I had no shoes and my clothes were full of holes. During the long cold winters, we’d stuff cotton in the holes in our trousers to try to keep our legs warm. We just didn't have the money to buy shoes, let alone new clothes. These days, having clothes full of holes is fashionable…

We lived in a mud house and we made beds with branches from trees covered in dead grass. If it was raining outside then it was raining inside. I started school at the age of seven but then my mom gave birth to my little brother and then to my little sister, so I stopped school to help take care of them whilst my parents would work. At 10 years old I started school again. At the age of 17 my mother died, so from then on, I acted as a mother figure for my siblings. If we had money, my mother could have seen a doctor or bought some medicine, but we had no money. Maybe she would have survived. In those days, if you were sick, there were two choices; survive or die. No one cared if we were sick. No one cared if we couldn't see a doctor. No one cared if we died. 

READ: Humans of China: "I Was Very Popular With the Girls!"

Photo: Cameron Hack