Narrator: Li Gui
Written by: Brother Minghao
My name is Li Gui, a native of Guangxi, with a primary school education, my parents are poor peasants, they have been diligent all their lives, digging in a few acres of thin land, and have never had free time, but their lives are getting worse and worse.
I didn't have the heart to study, and I didn't want to live the life of my parents, and I couldn't turn over for the rest of my life.
In the early 90s, after I finished primary school, I went to work as an apprentice in a restaurant owned by an acquaintance in Shenzhen, doing some odd jobs.
In the blink of an eye, I worked as a handyman in an acquaintance's restaurant for five or six years, and he saw that I was diligent and careful, so he trained me to start learning to chop and stir-fry vegetables, practice my cooking skills, and slowly increase my salary.
I'm quite flexible, I'm diligent, and I'm getting better at cooking, so I can take charge of my own business, and I'm about to take charge of the kitchen when the old chef in the restaurant retires.
Before I could officially take charge of the kitchen, the restaurant closed down first.
I was still young at the time, I didn't have any sense of saving, I spent as much as I was paid, and I worked in a restaurant for so long, and in the end, my pocket was still empty.
So, I had to go back to Guangxi first, rest at home for a while, ask my parents' opinions, and then make plans.
Because I have five or six years of experience in the back of the kitchen, and I also have some cooking skills, my parents and relatives suggested that I should find a restaurant to apply for a chef job.
But things don't go according to people's hearts, I walked around the streets and alleys of my hometown to find a lot of restaurants, and people thought I was young and unreliable, and no one wanted to hire me as a chef.
Most of my work experience is a kitchen handyman, although I can stir-fry, I have never actually been in charge of cooking, so these restaurants are only willing to hire me as a handyman, serving dishes and washing dishes, and the salary is very low.
After working as a handyman for so many years, I naturally didn't want to do this again, so I simply lay down at home, began to mess up, helped my parents do farm work, and mixed up time every day.
But not long after, my father became seriously ill and the family was in dire need of money, so I had to go out again to earn a living.
It just so happened that a distant relative came to visit my father, and while chatting with him, I heard him say that he tied steel bars at a construction site in Shenzhen, and made a lot of money, all of which were paid daily, and if he worked hard a day, he could earn fifty or sixty yuan.
After hearing this, I was immediately moved, this fifty or sixty yuan was not a small amount of money in those days, and many migrant workers earned three or four hundred yuan a month.
That distant relative, with a dark complexion, a lean body, and calluses on his hands, looked like he had suffered a lot. I'm completely different, even though I've been working as a handyman in the back kitchen for five or six years, I'm still fine-skinned and tender.
At that time, I didn't realize how much suffering was waiting for me.
I told my mother to take good care of my father, so I followed the distant relative to Shenzhen again.
When I arrived at the construction site, my relatives who had brought me all the way took me to the foreman and began to erect a frame and tie up the steel bars on my own.
The contractor told me that I am not familiar with it now, so I can only learn by doing, calculate the salary casually, and wait until I am proficient in the technology, and then come to the piecework, and get more work. If you are quick and work for more hours every day, the money will definitely not be less.
With confidence, I climbed up the shelf, asked relatives and other workers for advice on how to tie the rebar, and learned as I went.
Except for my relatives, the other workers didn't seem to want to teach me much, and I later learned that they were afraid that I would rob them of their jobs, and if there was one more person to do things, they would naturally have less work. I had to learn from my relatives, and from time to time I handed cigarettes to other workers and patiently asked for advice, and they gradually gave me some advice.
I still underestimate this job, although there is a lot of money, it is all exchanged for the body of the workers, they squat on the shelf every day, wearing hard hats, squatting for hours, even eating are their own lunches, hastily solve the problem and continue to work.
I hadn't started working much on the day I came, and just learning skills from a few seniors made me feel so tired that my back hurt and my head was dizzy.
I was puzzled and asked my relatives why they were in such a hurry, like a double robbery in the countryside, it was too hurried and tiring.
He told me that this is not something that happens every day, and that when it is done, it is gone, and I have to wait for the next time, so I have to work hard, and whoever does more will earn more.
After that, every day before dawn, I went to the construction site, bought five or six steamed buns, a large bottle of water, climbed up the shelf, and began to clumsily tie steel bars until the evening.
I was tired enough to choke on those days, and I quickly mastered the skill of tying rebar, and my speed was much faster than before.
The contractor began to give me piecework, I worked day and night, and earned more than 200 yuan in a week, and I immediately transferred the money to my mother to solve the urgent need of my father's hospitalization.
Unfortunately, before I could make any more money, my father passed away, and he had terminal lung cancer that he didn't survive.
When I returned to Guangxi, I saw my father lying quietly, crying profusely, and borrowing money everywhere to deal with my father's funeral.
After my father's funeral, I stayed with my mother for a few days to comfort her. In the past few days I went to Shenzhen, I had a miserable life, I lost more than a dozen pounds, my face was tired, and my hands were full of injuries. When my mother saw me like this, she was also very distressed, and her tears flowed, and she told me to take care of myself.
After I returned to Shenzhen, the batch of work on the construction site had been completed, and I had nothing to do, so the contractor left my contact method, saying that he would notify me to come over as soon as he received the next batch of work, and I could only agree to come down.
In the days when there was no work to be done on the construction site, I went back to my old job, went to the hotel to do temporary chores, and as soon as the contractor of the construction site notified me that there was work to do, I immediately ran to the construction site with a bucket, for fear that the work was done.
Several years have passed in a flash, with the development of the economy, the rapid development of urban construction, more and more work in the construction industry, and the gradual increase in wages, I have saved some money.
I was also lucky, when I was working as a temporary worker in a restaurant, I met a waitress girl who matched her personality very well, and the two of us were very happy to stay together.
She didn't have a high level of education, and she didn't dislike my primary school culture, and during that time, we went out to play when we had time, and visited all the nearby attractions, and a string of sugar gourds made her happy. After dating for a period of time, with the advice of both parents, we tied the knot and walked through this long life hand in hand.
For people like us who are running around, there is no stable job, and we do some dirty work, and many of our co-workers are not married until middle age, and they are alone, so it is really my blessing to be able to meet a gentle and virtuous wife in my twenties and get married.
My wife and I had some savings at the time, and we must not be able to afford to buy a house, I have seen many restaurants close down, the market is not good, and I don't dare to open a restaurant to do business by myself, so I have never dared to spend money indiscriminately, and work honestly.
In the next five or six years, my wife and I had three children, two sons and one daughter. As for why I gave birth to so many, I think it was also because I saw that my parents only gave birth to me, and I didn't even have a helper when it was difficult, and the older generation in our rural areas also had a saying that they had many children and were blessed.
There were many children and large expenses, so I worked day and night on the construction site to support my family in those years. The wife takes care of the children in the rental house and comes back to process some manual work.
Although life is stressful, work intensity is high, and it is too hard, the family does not have to worry about eating and drinking.
I only have a primary school education, but I know that only by reading can I turn over, so I don't have to work as hard as I do, so I encourage my children to read seriously from an early age, and as long as they want to read, no matter how difficult life is, I will let them continue to read.
With the earnest teaching of my wife and I, the three children are still competitive, and they have all been admitted to university one after another.
My wages are also quite high now, and I can sometimes earn more than 1,000 yuan by working more than 10 hours a day. Coupled with the savings of previous years, the family saved a little, and the children's tuition and living expenses were barely enough. Doing the line of tying steel bars, it is also a young job, I am older, and my physical strength can not keep up, I am tired of working day and night, and it is estimated that I will not be able to do it in a few years.
I believe that my three children who have gone to college should not mix too badly in the future and can ensure their lower limit in life. They gave us a few hundred yuan each, which was enough for my wife and me to go back to the countryside, and our old couple was able to retire with peace of mind.
I have worked hard all my life, I have not made a fortune, for myself, and for the country, I have trained three college students, and I am content in this life, which can be regarded as something that I am proud of as a low-level person in this life!