The first forty years of my life were utterly ordinary. No, they were bland and uneventful. At fourteen, I followed my mother to Xinjiang, only to find myself out on the Gobi Desert as soon as we arrived. Back in the nineties, large-scale infrastructure construction hadn't taken off yet, and no one thought there was much difference between city and country life. I was just an ordinary person, about as ordinary as they come. If there was one small difference, it was that I looked decent enough, so I got married and had a son at seventeen or eighteen. Then, at twenty, I was blessed with a daughter.
I watched the children around me go to private schools. Back then, school enrollment depended on household registration, but private schools didn't have that requirement. Still, none of them amounted to much. So I made up my mind to give my children a proper education in the city, and I got my wish: they were able to attend school there. Later, the infrastructure boom arrived, and I became a migrant worker. When my child started middle school, I bought a house. When they started high school, I bought a van. Later, I bought a small car as well.
It was good in some ways and not so good in others. I just felt that my life was missing a goal worth devoting myself to until the day I died. (Later, I gave it the name "I Would Give My Life for My Country.")
Everything changed completely after that seven-day trip to Jiangxi!
