A young man by the Qingjiang River started from the town pier, took a dilapidated ferry and a green train, and bumped all the way to the provincial capital, to Tianjin, and to the military camp in the north. He has lived in an attic built on top of a public toilet, stood guard on a winter night at minus ten degrees Celsius, and defecated in a dusty field. He desperately tried to break free from the misplaced family system, but found that he had been shaped into a "misplaced screw" - his mother's emotional partner, his father's invisible substitute, and his sister's younger brother who always had to protect him.
He thought that putting on the military uniform could change his destiny, that he could escape poverty by going to college, and that meeting love could cure everything. But when the spiritual systems of the two families collided, he discovered that some injuries are passed down from generation to generation, and some dislocations cannot be undone by you alone.
This is not an inspirational story of a successful person, but a true record of an ordinary person crawling and rolling in the mud, trying to stand up straight and live. The title of the book "Stand Up Straight and Live" is about digging out the dead self in the past, exposing it to the sun, and then burying it.
Dedicated to all those who are torn between their original family and their new family.
