A father for half his life, a family man for all of it. Li Shoutian’s life is a portrait of millions of fathers: born in years of famine and raised in bitter hardship, he labors from boyhood and hustles through middle age, saving for his children’s wedding gifts and building them new homes, then caring for his grandchildren and worrying himself sick. He swallows his suffering and shoulders his exhaustion. After a lifetime of toil without a moment’s rest, his final words, “In my next life, I don’t want to be human,” lay bare the sorrow and despair of an ordinary man at the bottom of society.
