A Man Cannot Defy His Fate

Lin Ye's sixteenth year was a year in which fate set him down gently, then cast him aside without mercy. Born in the countryside, he was completely abandoned by his mother as a child and raised alone by his hypocritical, cold-hearted father. His father had valuable technical skills and a decent income, yet begrudged him even the slightest chance at a better future or a moment of warmth. All he cared about was maintaining a respectable image in front of outsiders. Lin Ye barely passed the cutoff for regular high school, but there was nowhere for him to go. To ease the burden on his family, he gave up the slim chance of getting into a school by paying extra fees and chose a county vocational school that charged only 2,800 yuan in tuition, joining the ranks of the countless students who failed their exams and had nowhere else to turn. A wall separated the vocational school from the proper secondary school: on one side, students followed the usual path of education; on the other, youth was left to wither in neglect. During his brief time at school, he reunited with a dear childhood friend, experienced the first stirrings of young love, and came to see clearly the coldness of his family, the sharp divide between social classes, and the loneliness of having no one to fall back on. He was gentle, patient, and sensible. He had never done anything wrong, yet from the moment he was a boy, there was only one path left to him: to endure it all. This is a true-to-life account of the lives of rural young people born in the 2000s, with little education, no one to support them, and no choice but to grow up too soon. There are no earth-shattering tragedies or dramatic twists of fate. Only the unspoken hardship, the long years of carrying burdens, and the ordinary destiny of countless young people at the bottom of society, living in an age of prosperity yet barely managing to get by despite giving everything they have. Not everyone is destined for glory in life. Most people are like Lin Ye, exhausting every last ounce of strength just to keep living.