When you first see a girl like that, you think she's a dewdrop on a camellia, fresh and spirited. Time turns her into a coarse-voiced farmwife. It erases her innocence and beauty, but what does it leave her with?
Against the tide of reform and opening up, this story tells of an ordinary rural girl, one of the first women from central China to head to the coastal regions for work. It follows her diligence and hard work, her persistence and compromises in love, and her choices, hesitation, and confusion as she faces life. Perhaps her diligence, persistence, and choices seem foolish, stubborn, or laughable compared with those of the few successful people who started out where she did. But I don't want to write a biography of a successful person. I only want to write about the people in this generation whose lives moved me. They may not have succeeded, but no one can deny that they were stepping stones for those who did, and for this era.
There are typos, but it's interesting.