Missed and Not Missed in Those Years

On April 21, 2002, I boarded a train from Wuhan to Puhai, a small coastal town in the south. I was thirty-two years old that year. Before this, I was a journalist working for a local TV station. Leaving the familiar hometown and going to a strange foreign land in my thirties was not because of my ambition or passion. My child is in elementary school, and her mother was laid off a few years ago. When I faced a mediocre career, complex human relations at work, and even an income that could not guarantee the normal functioning of the family, I had to face the reality, give up the vanity in front of me, put aside the timidity in my heart, resign decisively, and go to work. I went to a former colleague who was both my teacher and brother far away to seek help and get a chance to change the status quo so that I could fully fulfill my family responsibilities as a man and create ideal living and learning conditions for my children to prevent them from repeating my growth experience and experiencing the hardships and hardships of life again.