Ordinary Days

Life stretches on before us, and we are all ordinary people walking its road. After graduating from a junior college, Chen Ping'an couldn't find a more suitable job. To make ends meet and keep his family from worrying, he took a referral and became an assembly-line operator at an electronics factory.

The work was simple and repetitive, the shifts turned night into day, and most of the people around him were content to muddle through. At first, he thought he would settle in and figure things out later. But after three months, he began to realize more and more clearly that this seemingly stable life was actually consuming the possibilities of his youth.

He didn't want to look like a man in his fifties or sixties while still in his twenties, and he didn't want to spend his whole life trapped on an assembly line, doing the same work over and over. After weighing it again and again, he finally resolved to quit and leave the factory that had held him captive. With his modest savings, he set off alone for an unfamiliar place, beginning a life on the road as he searched for a direction of his own.