Translator’s note: The police have issued summoning orders to writers living outside Lanzhou and they’re legally bound to travel there. No financial aid for traveling either if you cannot afford it you just become a criminal by not showing up.
2025-05-30
In the past twenty years of my life, I may have never thought that the first time I were to fly would be to get to the police station in Lanzhou. Before departure, I repeatedly compared the prices of high-speed rail and air tickets, my fingertips swiping the screen for a long time. Eventually, I chose the cheaper early morning flight. I looked out the window as the plane took off, watching the cities, mountains, rivers getting smaller and smaller, I felt my insignificance so clearly for the first time. Chengdu was sunny, I wore short sleeves and shorts. Lanzhou was sometimes cold and sometimes hot, the weather changed a lot . I was shivering with cold when I landed. Later I came to the realization that if you have a forecast for life, it’d be even more unpredictable than the weather.
I started writing stories just because I enjoyed it. My family was always short on money. My parents had to go out before dawn and came back exhausted late at night. I wanted to save some money to help ease the pressure at home. I wrote for several years on Haitang, but readers were sporadic. Until those texts that (I thought) no one cared had acclimated ~300,000 clicks, and the ~4,000 yuan royalties in my account had become evidence of my crime. After I got out, I fiddled with my phone like a walking death, searching for legal provisions online. When I saw that those with more than 25 hits could face a sentence of more than 10 years(citation needed), I heard the sound of a bird flying past the window. It turns out that people can really freeze on a sunny day.
I used to fantasize that the day I finally saved enough money, I would be able to take a plane for the first time to start my life’s journey. Now it seems impossible. After this incident, I can’t determine where my life will go. My biological parents sold me twice when I was a child because my family was poor. I was passed on to my current adoptive parents. They treat me well and as their own child. However, due to the limit of their life’s scope, their thoughts are very conservative. They only want me to be more diligent and find a good man to marry. If I were too lazy, the man and my in-laws would dislike me. Similar words were often heard before I left home. I can’t communicate with them about major life decisions. I believe that their thoughts have been deeply rooted and I could not change their mind. But at the same time, I don’t want to just obediently follow the path they envisioned. I write for this reason, hoping to control my own life, grow up slowly, and not follow the path arranged by my parents.
Since I was a child, my family has been in debt. I had to be sent to my aunt’s house, living under someone else’s roof. At that time, my mother gave my aunt 300 yuan(~50 usd) a month, and my aunt would give me 50 cents or 1 yuan (translator’s note: 1 yuan = 100 cents) every day to let me buy food in the school cafeteria. In fact, a lunch in the cafeteria at that time was already 5 or 6 yuan, but I didn’t dare to tell my aunt, so I only ate white rice with some lard and salt, it was actually quite delicious. If I saved for two days I could buy a pack of spicy strips and cold noodles.I ate them quite happily.
During the days when I lived at my aunt’s house, I never dared to make any requests. At that time, I really wanted to buy a fountain pen, but I didn’t dare to ask for it, so I tried to sell my hair. In order to sell for 10 more yuan, the auntie who cut my hair did a very bumpy job (to get more hair). I had a bumpy head in the mirror, and my classmates made fun of me all day the next day.
Later, after I went to Chengdu and lived with my parents, I couldn’t change this mentality and was always embarrassed to speak up. That and with my parents’ dominance and control, my personality has become more and more introverted. Actually, I also know that my parents work really hard to make a living. They have to go out before dawn and come home at eleven or twelve o’clock in the evening. But it is precisely because of how busy they are, when they are upset or unhappy, they will vent their anger on me.
I remember that once they encountered a quite troublesome matter, and the only thing I could do was to prepare meals so that they don’t have to worry about it. But when I served rice to my mother, she knocked over the bowl and started to scold me for being ignorant and bringing bad luck.
That is when I felt envious of my classmates who could play with friends on weekends. I was too ashamed to speak to my parents about this, seeing them being busy, I felt guilty if I were to ”idle”. It may be that I have been wandering in several families when I was a child, the insecurity of not belonging has become the main storyline of my life. But in the process of growing up, I found that I can express myself through writing, and I start hoping that I can change my fate through writing. Writing is a light that I lit in the dark for myself. When my parents got angry because of their exhaustion, when I envied my classmates for having weekends, when I was afraid of becoming a “reproductive tool”, I thought I could get rid of all these shackles of the predetermined fate through writing, I thought what I wrote was my future. But I never thought that this future was pointing to prison.
I went to Lanzhou again on Wednesday and met some other authors. I learned that some of those arrested were even college students. The prosecutor said the case would be transferred to the court in June. I just received the notice from the public security department two weeks ago that the case was transferred to the procuratorate (translator’s note:the Chinese agency responsible for legal prosecution). I didn’t expect it to progress so quickly, without giving me a chance to breathe. When I saw my reflection on the glass while waiting to board my flight, I suddenly remembered that afternoon when I was ten years old and had a bad, bumpy haircut. It turns out that some prices have already been foreshadowed in life.
If time could go back, I would still pick up a pen to write a story. I will keep writing in the future, I just need to find my rhythm as of now, and then go to a legitimate platform to continue learning and creating. At this moment, I only hope that the law can see through the lines and see the girl who saved money with an empty stomach, the girl who sold her hair for a pen, the girl who thought words could chisel open the wall of fate, and give all of us a fair result.
If more authors are to be summoned to Lanzhou, please remember to check the local weather forecast first and bring layers. I also want to advise all the authors who are still writing on Haitang based on my own experience: no matter how low your profit is or how low the number of clicks is, don’t take chances, and don’t write anymore.