"You think poverty is the shackles of fate, until you realize it's the sharpest pair of scissors."
Debt had cut Lin Qiang's life to pieces: her father's bankrupt orchard, her mother's textile mill where she was laid off, and the overdue bill for her younger brother's outrageously expensive math Olympiad classes. When her Peking University admission letter was exchanged for eight crumpled bills at a pawnshop, eighteen-year-old Lin Qiang clutched a sewing needle and understood one truth: there are no holes in this world that can't be mended, only scars that can't be turned into cash.
