My mum left home when I was 6, until now we still have no news about her. I became a child without a mum. All the heavy burden was pushed down against my dad. There’s no school in our village, I could only go to Si Xing Zi Qian elementary school, in an area off the mountain road. It’s a long way by foot, therefore I stayed in school. In order to alleviate the burden my father had, I went home every Saturday and I helped my dad with cutting the wood. My grandmother could only help us cooking and feeding the pigs. Even though our life conditions were bad, my grandmother and father didn’t make me drop school.

Long term labour and heavy family burden had seriously delayed the collapse of my father’s health. He suffered from nephritis, he had hydrous in both kidneys. This made things even worse to our unstable home. Due to the very difficult circumstances we were going through, and had no money to heal our dad disease, on the 7th of April of 2015 dad left me forever. Since then I truly became an orphan with no dad and mum. Every night after my father passed away, I thought of the sadness and helplessness of before, I thought of my grandmother bending her back towards my father’s body, taking place the tragedy of seeing her child dying before herself. I couldn’t stop my tears, I didn’t know what will happen to me, where my future was. That year my grandmother was 85 years old, she hugged me and told me while crying: “child, do not be scared, you still have your grandmother”. After burying my father, grandmother brought me to school down the hill. At that moment, we didn’t have any income. Only what the government gave to over 80-year-old elder as subsidy. I lived at school and I only had one chance every week to visit my grandmother.

Today, I wrote that much containing my tears. I wanted to thank my grandmother, I’m thankful to her for never leaving each other and thankful for taking good care of me.