In 2011, Ding Yinan's life was going fairly smoothly. Her son, Ding Ding, was about to turn five. Her husband was a key technician at a company. The work was tiring, but the pay was decent. She had been working as the company's finance manager for two years and was doing well there, while her parents were in good health and helped take care of their little family. So the whole family made a decision for Ding Ding's education: they would buy an apartment in a good school district. They sold her parents' old home, emptied both her parents' and her own savings, and took on several hundred thousand yuan in debt. At last, they became mortgage slaves, with both joys and sorrows. The bad luck was that soon after they took on the mortgage, the harshest housing-price controls in history arrived. The news made the whole family wince every day. Their new home had not even been built yet, and its value had already dropped by over a hundred thousand yuan. What they never expected was that at the end of 2011, Ding Yinan suddenly lost her job. Their already tight finances now faced an even greater challenge. In 2012, Ding Yinan was lost and confused. Would she find the courage to face life's challenges again? Would 2012 be a turning point for her?
