Jiejing South Korea
I was born to an ordinary peasant family in northeast China. We passed our lives with our faces to the earth and our backs to the sky for generations. Seeing my forebears spend every day doing backbreaking labor in the fields, the ignorant me said to myself, “I’m not going to live like them.” Therefore, as a child, I swore I would study hard and walk out of the countryside with my own efforts. As I grew older, this resolution gradually took root in my heart. To realize my wish, I buried myself in my studies every day. Never did I dare to slack off. Even when my friends and classmates hung out after school or at weekends, I just shut myself indoors studying. My parents advised me to go play outside, but I said, “No, I must study hard. I want to go to college and get a good job in the future. Only then can I earn money and buy you a house in town, so we no longer have to live in the countryside.”