By Zhou Li Fostering My Ideal When I was 10 years old, my female cousin tested into college. After graduation, she easily got a stable job, successfully bidding farewell to the life of living by farming and becoming somebody. Every time I saw she returned home gloriously with our villagers’ admiration and praise for her, […]
By Zhuanbian One morning when I tidied the room, I opened my father’s favorite cabinet and found all kinds of certificates of honor, some of which had turned musty for being kept too long. Once I was very proud of these glories my father gained. However, when I thought about his recent condition, I felt […]
By Tong Yu This is an age when people advocate physical attractiveness and make a living with their looks. Consumed with the latest trends, they all pay close attention to their own image. Especially in the last few years, “big eyes and little face,” “palm-sized face” and “skinny beauty” have become aesthetic standards in the […]
By Jiali My young heart deeply hurt for my short stature. I was small when I was a child, so the elders around me often said to me, “You should eat more, or you won’t get taller if you lack nutrition.” “You see the daughter of So-and-so is tall and pretty. It’s so worthy of […]
By Bong I wanted to be rich. I was born into a peasant family in the Philippines. I had a big family and we led a poor life when I was young. I remembered when I was in high school, once I was not allowed to take the exam because my family had no money […]
By Duo Ji I worked designing patterns in a printworks. In a modest office worked only my boss, my colleague Xiaozhang, and I. In the boss’s eyes, Xiaozhang, who had been a designer there for more than a year, was a hardy, humorous, and capable person, and so the boss liked him and valued him […]
By Xiaolu The 21st century is an era where people follow celebrities. I, born in the 00’s, was not interested in it in the beginning, and whenever I saw my classmates crazily doing that in various ways, I felt it was so boring. However, later on by chance I actually also indulged in following celebrities […]
By Cheng Shun The Death of My Neighbor Evokes My Memories At past 8:00 p.m. on a midsummer evening, my neighbor Wang Ke’s wife rushed to my house with a phone in her hand, and said, “It’s high time that Wang Ke should be home, but he still hasn’t arrived yet. I’ve phoned him so […]
By An Hui Having an Inferiority Complex About My Plain Appearance I used to be a very inferior girl. Whenever I saw beautiful and elegant girls on TV or in magazines, I was consumed with envy. Then, looking at myself in the mirror: Ordinary appearance, normal figure, and yellowish teeth, all these caused the sense […]
By Zheng Xue I used to think that, after going to college and getting a good diploma, I would then be able to find a good job and live a good life, and that this would also mean that I would have a good destiny…. But things didn’t quite turn out this way … I […]