My Seventeen Years Left Behind

A cry forgotten deep among the mountains, and a girl who writes an unyielding life through a thorny childhood.

In the 1990s, in remote and isolated Daping Village, Guizhou, an infant girl's cry pierced the gloomy night amid October's bitter winds. Pingping, the Tang family's eldest granddaughter, was born on a dowry bed covered in straw. Her arrival brought no joy. Instead, it marked the beginning of a childhood destined to be full of hardship.

She was an “unwanted” daughter. Her grandmother, Qiu Guiying, had a strange “yin-yang face” and an even more poisonous heart. A son-preferrer, she saw Pingping as a thorn in her side. Her parents left home to make a living, cruelly leaving three-year-old Pingping behind to struggle for survival amid her grandmother's curses, abuse, and exploitation. She was a barefoot cowherd. From the age of five, she walked barefoot over frozen earth and snow and beneath the scorching sun, herding cattle, chopping firewood, carrying water, and doing laundry. Cracked chilblains, chasing snakes and insects, and near-falls from cliffs were all part of daily life. Having a pair of feet she could walk on was a dream she hardly dared to hope for. She was a “blockhead” and a “wild child.” Despised by her relatives, she was passed around until she ended up at her maternal grandmother's home, where she faced even deeper exclusion and humiliation. When she returned to her paternal grandmother, the abuse grew worse. The villagers' cold stares, bullying by her peers, and indifference from her teacher left her with nowhere to belong, at school or in the village. She was a “greedy” student. Knowledge was her only glimmer of light. The encouragement of her mentor, Elder Ran, was the only warmth in her darkness. She studied desperately and excelled, yet at the start of every term she was forced to stand as punishment because her family couldn't pay her school fees, enduring jeers of, “Why bother going to school?” She was a “strong” big sister. Her parents left again and again, eventually leaving her to care for her younger brother and sister as well.