Twenty-seven years ago, I was born into the Chen family.

My grandmother, oh no, she's actually my real mother.

During her pregnancy, she took a large amount of sex-changing pills, trying to turn me into a boy.

As a result, I was born with both male and female physiological characteristics.

This was undoubtedly a great blow to parents who were eager to have a boy.

Even worse, I was a freak.

Ever since I can remember, I've been beaten and starved.

When they were unhappy, they would beat me, saying I brought bad luck.

Even when they were happy, they would beat me, saying that seeing me ruined their good mood.

If my own parents were like this, there was no reason for the village kids to hold back.

They thought of all kinds of ways to bully me.

Liu Xiaoqiang was the worst, bad to the extreme.

If murder weren't illegal, he would have been dead long ago.

One winter, he lured me to a deserted place with a piece of sweet potato.

He told me to take off my clothes so he could see what a freak looked like.

I refused and tried to run away.

He threw stones at me from behind and eventually pushed me into a puddle.

If my grandmother hadn’t heard my cries and run over, I might have happily died that winter.

It would have been better if I had died then; I wouldn't have had to endure the pain that followed.

Speaking of my grandmother, she was the only person who treated me well at the time.

She took me in, cooked for me, made clothes for me, and raised me like a child.

During that period, I sneaked into school to listen to the teachers' lectures.

There was a young volunteer teacher who was a college student; she often talked about life in the city.

When she heard about my background, she kindly let me into the classroom and said she would apply to the education bureau to let me attend school for free.

“As long as you study hard, you can live the life you want.”

“Chen Zhaodi, hard work can change your fate.”

From her lessons, I learned that cars outside had four wheels, buildings had elevators, and the night lights were colorful...

When I got home, I would relay what I had learned to my grandmother.

“Grandma, you've been good to me, so I'll be good to you too!”

“When I grow up, I'll go to the big city to work and make money, and then I'll take you there to see and eat lots of good food!”

My grandmother stroked my head with her withered hand and smiled, nodding, saying she would live well to watch Zhaodi grow up and succeed.

After I was born, my parents kept trying to have another child, but they never succeeded.

An examination at the hospital revealed that because my mother had taken a large amount of sex-changing pills during her pregnancy, her body was damaged and she could no longer conceive.

They blamed me for this again.

“It's all because of you that we can't have another child!”

“You freak! Jinx!”

My father wanted a divorce, but my mother refused no matter what.

No matter how much my father beat and cursed her, she wouldn’t agree.

More than twenty years ago, a divorced woman could never hold her head up again.

My grandmother was also very afraid that they would get a divorce and always sighed.

I struggled to survive in the cracks.

I worked hard to do house chores, cut pig grass, and collected garbage to exchange for money, hoping they would look upon me more favorably.

Things would get better when I grew up.

The teacher said things would get better when I grew up.

Until one day, two men and a woman arrived in the village, bringing three to five children.

I never grew up as promised.

On the day I was sold, it happened to be my seventh birthday.

They sold me to gather enough money to buy a boy.

That day, my grandmother cooked a pot of eggs with brown sugar for me.

She embarrassedly said to me, “There’s no other way. We can’t let them get divorced! How would your mother live if she got divorced?”

I didn’t eat a single one of those eggs.

When the traffickers took me away, my mother held the two or three-year-old boy lovingly.

The gentle and loving look in her eyes had never lingered on me.