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China Elevator Stories
“I Have The Heart Of A Boy”
I chat with a young female massage therapist in Shenzhen.
14/08/2013
Ruth Silbermayr
Author
I ask her: “When did you move to Shenzhen?”
“I moved here just 2 months ago. I’m not familiar with this city yet. I went to Mangrove Forest twice, but I got lost every time I went there and could not find the way to the next public transport station, so I had to take a cab back home. I’ll never ever go there again.”
“Have you finished secondary school just before you came here?”
“I haven’t. I went to school until I was 13. After that, I started working. Going to school isn’t for me. I prefer to work.”
“You started working at a really early age. In Austria, you can only start working legally when you’re 15.”
She tells me: “In China, no one really cares about your age. Actually, I dropped out of school. I was quite good at primary school, but in middle school, I was a really naughty kid. My teachers didn’t know what to do with me. Once, I wanted to go to the restrooms during class, but my teacher wouldn’t let me. So I just kept being loud and disrupted class. In the end, my teacher let me go to the restrooms. I went there but didn’t go back to class afterward. I was really mad at my teacher.
I liked to get into fights with other kids. And not just with kids. There was one teacher who treated me unfairly, so my friends and I beat her up together. I left on my own before they could throw me out of school. I never went back to school afterward.
My mother was very unhappy and often told me that I lacked intelligence. But luckily, I’m not as stupid anymore now that I’m older.
I have the heart of a boy, and I met the wrong kids when I was younger.”
Has anyone ever told you a story like this?
This is part of the series ‘Conversations with Locals in China,’ where I share conversations with Chinese people on my blog.
On a side note: Please excuse the low quality of the illustration. The original drawing was lost when my blog was taken down by my ex without my prior knowledge in 2017.