By Lingwu, Japan

I’m a child of the eighties, and was born into an ordinary farmer household. My older brother was feeble and prone to illness from the time he was little. My father was wounded in an accident when I was 10; he became completely paralyzed two years after that. Our family was poor to begin with, and we went heavily into debt for my father’s medical treatment. Our friends and relatives didn’t want to lend us any money because they were afraid that we would never be able to pay back the debt, so, left without any options, I was forced to drop out of school at 16 to go find work elsewhere. Deep in the night when everything was still, I would often think: “When we were all little, my peers were free to play after school, while I would have to go to the fields to do farming work; now we’ve all grown up, and they’re still in school, acting like spoiled brats in fro ... Read more »