My Heart Finds Its Own Way Home

The moon waxes and wanes; people face both good fortune and misfortune. I was born a poor and fragile girl at the start of the Renzi year. My family had next to nothing, and my loving mother gave birth to me at forty-three. As a child, I was nearly abandoned by my family several times and endured the world's warmth and cruelty. As I grew up, I weathered the upheavals of love and tasted the world's indifference. But after the darkest hour comes the dawn, and bitter days eventually turn sweet. I once rode a motorbike through Chang'an, weaving along its streets and lanes as I carried countless lives and their everyday stories. I also held my pen beneath the lamplight, writing of the years without pause and capturing the joys and sorrows of life. Never say a woman's fate is as fragile as paper. Like an orchid, her heart can bloom with its own quiet fragrance. However rough the road ahead, I can find my own way through and a place to call home. Look at me now: my temples may be touched with silver, but my heart still surges with passion. To write of all the world's myriad lives is also to save myself. And when the flowers finally bloom in all their glory, I will look back and see that every road has led to smoother ground. Born by the Han River and raised in poverty, I used words to record my childhood and family life in the 1970s. I wrote of partings and longing, and of the warmth and stubborn strength found in ordinary days.