(This passage is written in CN/EN respectively. Please read them in that order)
CN:
和各位说一下我的个人经历吧。
二十一世纪的第八年,经济上行时期的盛风正沿着陆地和海洋吹拂于整个世界,当年的珠江三角州正是在改革开放的阔海中乘风破浪,珠三角一直以来都是中国的掌上明珠,是整片亚太地区最闪耀夺目的璀璨宝珠,我的父亲在当时的珠三角做跨境贸易,在香港开的几家服装工厂正乘着海浪将衣物运送至境外,我的母亲也在那时与我父亲一起。
或许,没有那次亚太经济危机,我会成为一位珠三角的富二代吧,可经济发展的风浪中哪没有一点风雨,亚太经济危机的狂风海啸将我父亲在香港开设的贸易站和每一座工厂都给彻底卷没了,合伙人跑路,工厂倒闭,正如当年金融海啸之猛烈,在这样的背景下,本就性格脾气不合的夫妻怎会共同面对困难,就这样,我父母离异了,我那时只有四周岁,我的母亲当时想要挽留我,可我父亲态度坚决,我便跟随父亲一起到了内蒙古。
内蒙古的边远县城一直以来都是人流和经济凋敝的落魄地区,我的爷爷奶奶从来都生活在这里,我父亲将我送至内蒙古地区后,为了赚钱,便只能从当地离开,跑到经济发达的地区作自由职业者,而我则被留在内蒙古地区留守在爷爷奶奶身边,北方地区的空气干燥、气候寒冷,我在这里从小便有一点小鼻炎,不算严重,但日常发作,发作时是干巴巴的抽鼻子,这种状况在我处于北方地区时期一直存在。
我所读的幼儿园、小学、初中、高中都是在内蒙古郊区就读的,这里凋敝零落,我从小也从未见过什么世面,只知道小县城的那几座老旧楼房,从小到大我甚至就连商场都从没有见过。
我在小学时期曾遭受过较为严重的校园霸凌,同学们喜欢把脏东西抹到我身上,还喜欢给我起外号、说我什么都不是、说我是无价值的废物,天天挖苦我、排挤我,每位同学都很讨厌我,小学六年级时,我还被同学强行拖入厕所内,伴随着推搡和侮辱性言语,我如何求助也无人能够回应我,当时的老师也没有任何人对我身处援手,我从来都只是个饱受霸凌的留守儿童,时至今日,那时候我被打、被凌辱、被堵在厕所内的记忆,有时仍会闪回在我的目光前,有时我还能在耳边幻听到一些低语。
初中时,我刚入校就被分配到了当时全年组最差的班级,老师和同学都和神经病一样,但我仍旧凭自己的努力考入当时的尖子班,然后从尖子班学习考入普通高中。并且,由于我当时就读的初中是军校,我总共军训过两次,平时在校内也总是被教官狠狠挖苦。
高中时,我也就军训时受过一些欺负,其余也没什么其他问题,最开始我也是在校内的普通班,后来慢慢听课学习就考入实验班了,但随着课程的加深,我对于数学物理化学生物这些课程实在是学不会了,成绩也就逐渐掉下来了,而且,现在的生源状况也很差,很多企业所设立的学历门槛也越来越高,我实在不想继续在大学内浪费四年,我也不想继续在大学校园内考研读硕,如果我考不上985这种顶尖院校,我不如现在就休学进社会自己混吧,到时候自己学习做一点社会上的小生意也很不错。
休学后,我便在内蒙古的家里继续待了四个月,这期间我其实什么也干不了,因为还没有成年,再加上内蒙古小县城的经济环境实在太差,所以我只能天天躺在家里,慢慢等待成年,这期间我还因为自己的性取向问题与长辈和环境灌输给我的传统价值观念的巨大矛盾而得过心理疾病,自杀时幸好被人叫了警察,没有在北方寒冷的秋季跳河成功,后来我在当地精神卫生中心也就慢慢给自己治好了。
成年以后,我也不再多留什么,我便直接买好票,带上自己的行李去了火车站,当时是2026年的十月份,我坐上火车后,第一次真真切切的体验到了自己一个人出行,自己坐火车,第一次坐火车时,火车上有一位叔叔是我对面床铺的,但他要照顾老人,所以希望我能和他调换一下床铺,我同意了,后来他还给我递烟,虽说递烟送酒是中国流行的社交礼仪,但我并不抽烟,我便连忙以自己对尼古丁过敏为由婉拒了。列车上,为了省钱,我买的是普通车厢的上铺,床铺很小,但勉强也能躺下,车厢内的呼噜声特别大,所以我在列车内的晚上其实很难入睡。
火车上的餐食其实并不怎么好吃,花了二十多块钱买的盒饭,也就那样吧。就着咸菜疙瘩吃水煮蛋和米饭,配着一些清汤寡水的白菜,再喝一点稀粥入胃。
就这样在铁轨上坐了一夜后,第二天的下午我便从内蒙古抵达了北京,刚出火车站的时候,我确实有一种突然眼前一亮的感觉,作为中国的首都,这里要远比我之前的那座城市繁荣许多,我在这里能够听到很多种语言,也能看到各类来自不同国家的人,这里的环境确实很多元,和我从前的北方非常不一样。
在北京吃过一顿饭菜以后,我就前往地铁站,地铁站内的设施很智能,我只需要亮出手机上的出行码就能完成地铁缴费并找到我所要乘坐的地铁线,跟着指示走,我一路从北京站坐到了大兴国际机场,在这里,我先去订票处送行李箱、选座位,然后过安检口,进入机场内,机场的等候区其实是一座庞大明亮的大型商场,对于我这种从未见过世面的普通人来说,这足够让我惊讶很久了。
上了飞机以后,机舱内很窄,我坐了很久才勉强坐好,不过机舱的气压不太均匀,飞行过程中我一边张嘴一边揉耳朵,这才勉强缓解自己耳朵的症状,刚开始我还会有一点晕机,但后来坐久了以后我也就不晕了。
大概飞了三个小时左右,飞机就到达目的地了,一趟飞机大概要花掉一千五百块钱,很贵了,而且刚到广东的时候,我因为在本地水土不服还发烧了两天,两天后我也就病好了,说实话,这里的空气很闷热,蚊子很多,不过在街上和家里见不到蟑螂老鼠,但在一些犄角旮旯的小巷子里还是能够见到一点点。
目前我在广东地区待的是我母亲家里,我母亲后来又另嫁人了,并且还生了一个小弟弟,我弟弟今年六周岁,还在读幼儿园。我在当地逛了几天,顺手拍了几家招聘信息,我目前刚和我母亲帮完工地上的事情,现在正在准备打电话问招聘,但我这种刚满十八周岁的小孩子人家也不太乐意招我进去,目前也只能一边问一边碰运气,平时的水电费和房租我是省下来了,因为我在我妈妈家里住,这个房子是我妈妈全款买下来的,所以我对工资要求也没那么高,每个月能攒下两三千块钱对我来说就可以,我目前的计划是边工作攒钱边学习一些课程,等我学好以后我就可以自己拿着攒够的钱继续去别的城市彻底独立了,到时候我或许就能够做成一些小生意了。
我目前开了一个X上的账号,并开通了Premium,准备在这上面做做内容,我也不图赚钱,我只是想学一学管理和运营一个账号。目前大概就是这个样子。
EN:
So, I wanna share my own story with you all.
Back in the 2000s, the economic upswing was sweeping across the globe, over land and sea. The Pearl River Delta was surfing the big open sea of reform and opening-up. The Pearl River Delta has always been the brightest jewel in China and the whole Asia-Pacific region. My father was doing cross-border business in the Pearl River Delta at the time, and was shipping clothes overseas by sea. My mom was by his side.
Maybe if that the Asian Fnancial crisis had never happened, I'd have grown up a rich kid in the Pearl River Delta. But there's no economic growth without some rough weather, right? The storm of the Asia-Pacific crisis completely swallowed up my father's trading station and every factory he'd opened in Hong Kong. His partners fled, the factories shut down. In a situation like that, how could a husband and wife who already didn't get along possibly face the hardship together? And so, my parents divorced. I was only 4-years-old. My mother wanted to keep me, but my father was firm, so I went with him to Inner Mongolia(Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, China).
The remote counties of Inner Mongolia have always been poor, my grandparents have lived here. After my father dropped me off in Inner Mongolia, he had to leave and he was went to more economically developed areas to work as a freelancer to earn money. , and I stayed behind in Inner Mongolia with my grandparents. The northern air is dry and the climate is cold in China, so I've had a touch of rhinitis since I was little. That's been the situation the whole time I've lived in the north.
I did kindergarten, primary school, middle school, and high school all in the outskirts of Inner Mongolia. It's a poor area, so I never got to see much of the world. I'd never even seen a shopping mall.
I was bullied pretty badly in primary school. My classmates liked to rub dirty stuff on me, call me names, tell me I'm a fool looser, every classmate despised me. In sixth grade, some classmates dragged me into the bathroom by force, shoving me and yelling insults at me. Not one teacher lifted a finger to help me. I was always just a left-behind children alone. To this day, those memories of being beaten, humiliated, and trapped in the bathroom still flash before my eyes sometimes, and sometimes I still hear whispers in my ears.
When I started middle school, I was put into the worst class in the entire grade. The teachers and students were all crazy. But I still worked my way into the top class, and from there I got into a high school. (In China, All juniors have to sit the high school entrance exam and if you don't pass, no regular high school for you.)
And since my middle school was a military school, I did military training twice total, and the instructors were always ruthlessly mocking me at school.
In high school, I only got pushed around a bit during military training and nothing else really. At first I was in a regular class, but then I slowly worked my way into the experimental class by paying attention and studying, but as the courses got harder, I just couldn't grasp math, physics, chemistry, and biology anymore, so my grades gradually slipped. And honestly, the student quality these days is pretty bad, and companies keep raising their education requirements higher and higher. I really don't want to waste four more years in college, and I don't want to stay on campus for a master's either. If I can't get into a better unversity(such as Beijing Unversity, Chongqing Unversity, Sichuan Unversity), There's no way I'm gonna get through a master's or PhD, or pass the civil service exam either. I'd rather just take a break from school now and go out into the real world and make my own way. By then, I can learn to run a little business, that'd be pretty good too.
After taking a break from school, I stayed at home in Inner Mongolia for another four months. I couldn't really do anything during that time — I wasn't an adult yet, and the economy in that little Inner Mongolian county town was just too bad — so I just lay around at home every day, slowly waiting to turn eighteen. During that time, I also developed a mental illness because of the huge conflict between my sexual orientation and the traditional values my elders and environment had drilled into me. When I tried to kill myself, thankfully someone called the police, and I didn't succeed in jumping into the river in the cold northern autumn. Later, I slowly got myself treated at the local mental health center.
Once I was eighteen, I didn't stay any longer, I just bought a ticket, took my luggage, and headed to the train station. It was October 2026. After I got on the train, it was the first time I genuinely experienced traveling alone and riding a train by myself. On that first train ride, there was an uncle in the berth across from me, but he needed to take care of an elderly person, so he asked if I could swap berths with him. I agreed. Later he offered me a cigarette, passing cigarettes and drinks around is a popular social etiquette in China but I don't smoke, so I quickly declined, saying I was allergic to nicotine. On the train, to save money, I bought an upper berth in a regular hard sleeper car. The berth was tiny, but I could just barely lie down. The snoring in the car was really loud, so it was actually pretty hard for me to fall asleep at night on the train.
The meals on the train weren't very tasty, honestly. I paid over twenty yuan(about $2.99) for a boxed lunch, and it was just okay. I ate a boiled egg and rice with a piece of pickled mustard tuber, some watery cabbage on the side, and a bit of thin congee to go with it.
So after sitting on the rails all night, I arrived in Beijing from Inner Mongolia the next afternoon. When I first walked out of the train station, I honestly felt like my eyes suddenly lit up. As China's capital, it's way more prosperous than the city I came from. Here I could hear all kinds of languages and see people from all sorts of different countries. The environment really is diverse — totally different from the north I knew before.
After eating a meal in Beijing, I went to the subway station. The facilities there were really high-tech — all I had to do was show the transit code on my phone to pay and find the line I needed. Following the signs, I rode all the way from Beijing Station to Daxing International Airport. There, I first checked my suitcase at the ticket counter and chose my seat, then went through security and entered the airport. The waiting area was actually a huge, bright shopping mall, for a regular person like me who'd never seen the world, that was enough to keep me amazed for a long time.
After getting on the plane, the cabin was really narrow, and it took me a while to finally get settled. The cabin pressure wasn't very even, so during the flight I kept opening my mouth and rubbing my ears — that was the only way I could barely ease the discomfort in my ears. At first I got a bit airsick, but after sitting for a while I wasn't dizzy anymore.
After about three hours of flying, the plane arrived at its destination. The flight cost around 1500 yuan(about $224.66) that's pretty expensive. And when I first arrived in Guangdong, I got a fever for two days because I wasn't acclimated to the local environment. Two days later I recovered. To be honest, the air here is really hot and humid, and there are lots of mosquitoes, but you don't see cockroaches or mice on the streets or at home though you can still see a few in some nooks and crannies in the alleys.
Right now I'm staying at my mother's home in Guangdong. She remarried later and had a little boy, my little brother is six this year and still in kindergarten. I've been looking around the area for a few days and took photos of a few job postings. I just finished helping my mom with some work at a construction site, and now I'm about to call and ask about those jobs. But for a kid who just turned eighteen like me, people aren't too keen on hiring me. For now I can only ask around and try my luck. I've saved on utilities and rent since I'm living at my mom's — she bought this place outright — so I'm not that picky about salary. Being able to save two or three thousand yuan a month is enough for me. My current plan is to work and save while taking some courses. Once I've learned enough, I can take my savings and go fully independent in another city. By then, maybe I'll be able to start a little business.
Right now I've set up an account on X and subscribed to Premium, and I'm getting ready to post some content there. I'm not in it to make money and I just want to learn a bit about managing and running an account. And that's pretty much the situation at the moment.
How did these academic historians even come to that conclusion and land on that number? Have they verified specifically how this quantity was achieved? If I had more time and energy, I would go find the book 'Mao: The Unknown Story' myself and then compare it with the historical materials I already have.
In China, the only way for any young person to gain social experience with zero prerequisites is food delivery. China has a huge population, developed economy, and fierce competition, most industries require prior experience. Without it, you won't get hired. I called several restaurants and was rejected by all, only food delivery is always hiring.
Today: get health certificate → attend offline training → buy an e-bike → start earning.
Once you get the hang of food delivery, you can make up to 10000 yuan a month (about $1500) at your best. Even doing reasonably well, you can make at least 3000 yuan a month (about $449). But the work is pretty intense. Don't look at the dollar amount and gasp, 'Wow, this job sucks!' That's just the exchange rate. 3000 yuan RMB is actually enough to cover rent and food for a month in China.