Those days lasted for several months. I soon realized that my mother and I held vastly different values and views on survival.
My mother always used young women around her as examples: who married a wealthy old man, who married a Hong Kong businessman, or who acquired significant property by being a mistress. In my mother's eyes, money was paramount; one should never turn its back on it, because only sufficient wealth ensures survival. I, however, did not see it that way. I felt that while loving a wealthy person is fine, it is not worth it if it is solely for the money. Eventually, we had a falling out and ceased contact. Since I had no way to return to Shanghai at that time, I had to start over in Shenzhen.
To make ends meet, I worked various jobs during those initial months: hotel waiter, warehouse clerk, and even a secretary at a state-owned enterprise who had nothing to do. The primary criterion for choosing a job back then was the salary, as I had to cover rent and daily expenses. Later, upon a friend's recommendation, I joined an international accounting firm, and my life finally got back on track. Looking back, if I hadn't chosen Shenzhen or had followed my mother's advice, I might have been like many of my classmates, achieving decent results in a foreign enterprise within just a few months. Sometimes I felt like I had wasted six months. However, I am now truly grateful to my mother and thankful for those days in Shenzhen. During that time, I witnessed how so many people struggle at the bottom of society, and I encountered people from all walks of life. Some were law-abiding, steadily seeking opportunities, while others used illegal means, hoping to make as much money as possible in the shortest time. But their starting point was the same—survival. This period taught me that to survive, one must possess enough courage and resilience to face the people and complexities of society.
I had a friend whom I spent one month with in Shenzhen; he later returned to a remote county in Hunan. He once told me his dream was to work in a television station; I later heard he was hosting children's programs at a local county station. We lost touch. Eight years later, when we met again in Beijing, he was a director at Zhuhai TV, while I had become a reporter for Phoenix TV. He told me it took him five years to progress from a county station to a provincial station, and then to Zhuhai, evolving from a contract worker to a permanent employee. He said that those days in Shenzhen taught him how to encourage himself to keep moving forward during difficult times.
