I’ve worked everywhere from a coal mine to a banana plantation to a toothbrush factory. I’m a worker in a “workers’ state.”

I am from Guizhou province, and I was born in 1980. I am the third of six children in my family. When I was in primary school, I had to work from 5 A.M. until school started at 8 A.M. It was very tiring. I left school in fifth grade. I also felt that there was too much of a burden on my mother.

After I dropped out, I secretly got a job in a local coal mine, where I was paid 450 yuan for fourteen days’ work. One day, at 8 A.M., there was a methane gas explosion, and four of us were buried more than twenty meters underground. Rescuers dug toward us from outside, and we dug toward them from inside. We had no food, and the digging was exhausting. It was after 5 A.M. the following morning that we were finally rescued.