Wang Sanya's Fateful Adventure in Qingcheng

In the 1990s, Wang Sanya lived in Tuzuoqi, Inner Mongolia. At sixteen, she hopped a freight train to escape an arranged marriage and made it to Qingcheng, where she fainted from hunger in a public restroom.

I worked as a nanny, wrapped ice cream, waited tables... I did every kind of work a woman could do...

But the city wasn't paradise.

My father gambled, my mother ran away, and our family fell apart.

Liu Dabiao, the man who wanted to force me into marriage, followed me like a shadow.

I thought I'd found someone who truly cared for me... but I was too foolish to tell whether he was saving me or ruining me.

I ran forward with the surging tide of the times...

Some of the women around me got rich overnight, while others sank to the bottom...

But I, Wang Sanya, held on through all thirty years and never went down.

Dedicated to my sisters born in the 1970s, as a reminder of the past and encouragement for us all.