In Dongguan, my youth came with a price tag
Synopsis:
In 1998, I was sixteen, and my youth had a set price.
Assembly line: 20 yuan a day.
My name is Jiang Chen. With blistered, bloodied hands, I measured out my days and nights on the assembly line. Here, every glowing light bulb costs me a little more of my youth.
Brotherhood: worth 130 yuan.
My childhood friend Jiang Feng spent a miserable 130 seconds with a hair salon girl, signing the first bill for the ruin of our innocent friendship.
The fear inspired by the gangs: price unknown, perhaps payable with your life.
The machetes of the “Heyitang” are the hardest currency in this part of town. They taught me that here, you either make money on your knees or lie bleeding on the ground.
The flutter of first love: too expensive for me to afford.
The human resources manager Zhong Qing has hair that falls to her ankles. It is the only poetry in my gray world. But with just 20 yuan in wages for a day, even asking her out for a bottle of soda feels like an extravagance beyond my station.
In Dongguan, everything has a price tag, including my body, my dignity, and my future.
When a brother gambles away his last shred of decency, when a tender haven turns out to be a carefully laid trap, when oppression ignites the fire in your blood...
I, Jiang Chen, will no longer be a commodity passively waiting to be sold.
I will find my own way to set a new price
on this youth that has been priced and sold!
A true account of one generation’s struggle to survive, and a young man’s bloody coming-of-age.
