The Country Lad of the Eighties: A Man Raised from the Soil

This isn't a wish-fulfillment story about being reborn with cheat powers. It's the complete, true story of a rural child born in the 1980s. My name is Fu Xiaoguo. I was born in an ordinary village deep in the mountains of southwest China. I ate meals made with a mix of coarse grains, wore patched clothes that had been mended over and over, lived in an earthen house that leaked when it rained, and walked muddy paths along the fields in every season. I spent my childhood running through the mountains and helping with chores in the fields. As a teenager, I studied by the light of a kerosene lamp, holding on to a little hope amid a life of poverty. As a young adult, I carried a simple pack out of the mountains and stumbled, persevered, and slowly made my way forward in the tide of the times. There was no golden finger, no luck from heaven, no dramatic comeback or reversal. There was only the full story of an ordinary person, living earnestly and growing little by little amid life's daily warmth and hardships. If you, too, grew up in the countryside, endured years of poverty, or gritted your teeth and kept going through ordinary days, perhaps you'll see your own reflection in these words and find memories of an era we shared.