Because my Family was poor, I had to worry about tuition fees and living expenses many times; it was hard to graduate from college and earn money, but my mother died of cancer. When I came to the age of Marriage, I had many blind dates in China, but I was repeatedly rejected because of my family’s poverty.
What I didn’t expect was that I, a part-Time worker handing out leaflets and serving dishes in Korea, ended up marrying a rich boy who graduated from Cambridge University.
I guess I have been living a bad Life for a long time, sometimes I feel like I am dreaming when I turn my head and see my thoughtful and motivated Korean husband and two lively and lovely sons around me, but it is not a dream. Life has made me suffer a lot, but it has finally given me some sweetness.
A souvenir photo of me and my Korean husband with Korean clothes on.
I was born in the 1990s, when there were only about 70 families in the whole village and most of them were struggling to make ends meet, growing millet, corn and other crops for a living.
My Parents tended hundreds of acres of apple orchards and built a brick house early, even with shiny tiles on the exterior walls, which shone brightly among the village’s dusty dirt houses.
Unfortunately, the good times did not last long. When I was 5 years old, my parents had to resell the orchard because of bad business, and the family was immediately cut off from the source of income. They bought a large amount of toilet paper, soap, lighters, which are commonly used in the countryside, and went around selling them at fairs.
In order to earn more money, in addition to the two bazaars near my Home, my parents would also go to the neighboring town’s bazaar, usually at dawn to get up, riding a tricycle over. As long as the holiday, I followed my parents to the market stall, together with the loading and unloading, dealing with customers to ask for quotations, collect and find change.
When I was in junior high school, I took a picture near my home, when the village was still all dirt roads.
365 days a year, parents rarely have free time. Because of this, I, like most rural children, grew up to be more self-reliant. My parents only cared that I was fed and clothed and had schooling, the rest they couldn’t care about, and it was hard for me to ask for anything else. The good thing is that I was born with an active mind, and although I was not supervised, my grades in elementary school were always stable at the top of the class.
My father was also a smart kid in the eyes of everyone when he was young, but because of his playfulness, he dropped out of middle school halfway through. When he ate some of the hardships of life, he regretted that he didn’t study properly, so he passed his hopes of going to college on to me, always hoping that I would one day become a success.
After junior high school, my father paid more and more attention to my studies, not letting me go to bed every night until twelve o’clock, and had to supervise my reading. Occasionally I did not pay attention to fall asleep, he did not wake me up, but the next day will be a stink face to show a warning. Under my father’s strict discipline, I barely fell out of the top three in my class for the three years of junior high school, and was successfully admitted to a major high school.
My mother is more or less patriarchal. My brother is eight years younger than me, my mother always doted on him, and always responded to requests, but was much stingier to me, occasionally asking her for money to buy a piece of clothing, she always reluctantly said: “Where is the money? There’s no money!”
My mother’s obvious preference for my brother inspired me to study hard and secretly think that I must earn a lot of money in the future and never spend her money again.
This is my mother, limited by the traditional concept of a little patriarchal, but a kind person.
Before high school, I have been studying in rural schools, everyone’s starting line is similar. In high school everything has changed, the class is mostly city kids, learning the bottom than we rural students to be much better.
In order to raise the ranking, every night after the lights out in the dormitory, I will be covered in the quilt to open the small light to read, do the questions, and stay up until the early hours of the morning to sleep.
Because of the anger in my heart towards my mother, I disciplined myself almost to the point of harshness. I thought the “rivalry” with my mother would last a long time, but a car accident in my sophomore year of high school unexpectedly brought us closer together.
The day of the monthly holiday, the sky was drizzling rain, I was sitting in the bus just driving away from the city not far, it hit the roadside trees, the huge impact of the tree trunk are broken. When the accident I was leaning against the window to sleep dazed, there was no seat belt, I was unprepared, the whole person from the window was thrown far away, on the spot unconscious.
More than ten years later, I still have a few light scars on the left side of my face.
I don’t know how long it took me to wake up, but when I opened my eyes, the wind had stopped raining and I was alone on a hillside with strangers standing around me. After fumbling to find my cell phone, I called my parents in tears, and they rushed from home to see me hurt and covered in blood, and my mother was in tears of distress.
I fell face down, broke a very deep mouth, the body also has small and large bruises and lacerations, but the good news is that no internal organs, are some superficial injuries, in the hospital for half a month to get better almost.
After this accident, my mother cherished me, from time to time to school to send a bunch of snacks, fruit, every holiday, but also personally stood at the entrance to the village to receive me to feel at ease.
In high school, I was favored by my mother, reading more vigorously, and in a much better mood.
The three years of high school passed quickly. For three years, I have been studying very hard, but the results are not as good as expected, hovering in the tenth or twentieth position in the class, the examination of a bachelor’s degree is also hanging. Perhaps it was lucky enough that in 2008, in the decisive college entrance examination, I was unprecedentedly ranked ninth in my class.
In that year, the second grade line in Liaoning Province was 480 points, and I scored 486 points, so I didn’t have much room to choose.
Maybe this score is not much to many people, but to me, it was like a dream.
When I entered the program, the teacher said that the program was a 2+2 model, which means that after two years of study in China, I could go to Korea or Japan for two years. When I was in high school, I loved watching the Korean drama “Miss Mermaid” and I was particularly fascinated by the Korean actor Kwon Sang-woo, so I had a longing for this country. I had never imagined that I would have the opportunity to study in Korea in the future, but I was so excited.
When I first entered college, I was still very simple looking.
However, in order to go to Korea for exchange, I first had to pay a separate language fee of 4,500 won. When I asked my family for money, my father strongly opposed it, thinking that studying abroad was a pipe dream for a rural family like ours.
I said that he would lend me the money and I would pay him back later when I worked, but he still wouldn’t relent. Finally, my mother helped to convince him.
Because I know that this money is not a small amount for the family, I offered to pay only 2,000 yuan per semester for living expenses, divided into only 400 per month. For this reason, I can usually save, never go to the supermarket, do not buy snacks, and never go to the mall with roommates to buy clothes, but run to the discount places to pick up the cheapest to buy, winter cold a cotton jacket is only 80 yuan.
I also found a part-time job at an off-campus spicy hotpot restaurant, and when I didn’t have classes, I ran errands to deliver meals to college students, earning a dollar and a half for one copy, 30 copies a day, and that was enough to cover my living expenses for one day.
In order to ensure that my grades could get the exchange quota, I ran to the library to study whenever I could, memorizing when I couldn’t learn and fighting with the books. At the end of my freshman year, I won a third-class scholarship of 500 yuan, and at the end of my sophomore year, I won a first-class scholarship, a one-time harvest of 3,000 yuan.
In addition to my major classes, I had to attend Korean classes every week, rain or shine. Since I had already studied Korean on my own and I was cheerful and not afraid to express myself, I progressed quickly in Korean and became the only student in my class who could speak to a Korean tutor.
In 2010, I (first from the right) was with my Korean classmates by the Yalu River.
The department had finally decided on three exchange places to Korea, and without a doubt, I was one of them. However, before I could rejoice, another “big mountain” came over me. To go to Korea, I needed to prepare 30,000 RMB, which included the cost of going abroad, airfare, and tuition and boarding fees for the exchange period.
My father was so reluctant to take the 4,500 yuan, so I didn’t want to ask my family for the 30,000 yuan. At that time, I had 5,000 yuan of scholarship for poor families, 3,000 yuan of scholarship, and the money I had saved through hard work and study, so I was able to get more than 10,000 yuan. The remaining gap of nearly 20,000 yuan gave me a headache.
The next summer, a male classmate and I went to a small town in Kuandian Manchu Autonomous County to work part-time, which took more than six hours by car from Dandong City. Previously, I saw on the school advertisement board that the training institution there was eager to hire college students to give lectures, and also included Food and accommodation.
I was so bold that I didn’t think I would be cheated, so I rushed there with a tiger’s head. In Kuandian, I worked part-time for 15 days and earned 1,500 yuan by teaching English and language to elementary school students.
The only thing I have in mind is to go to Korea to exchange this goal.
The money was still a drop in the bucket, I was worried every day, but I was about to leave the country, and I couldn’t find a way to make quick money, so I had no choice but to borrow from an old classmate who was well-off. The two of us since childhood relationship iron, know each other’s roots, he was very quick to lend me more than 10,000, just enough to make up the 30,000 yuan.
I dared to tell my parents about the exchange to Korea when I had enough money and the paperwork was done. Surprisingly, not only did they not blame me for the delay, but they also gave me 2,000 RMB to pay back my classmates’ money, in case I encountered any difficulties in Korea.
In March 2011, the second semester of my junior year, I left Dalian airport with two other students of the same major to report to Shilla University in Busan, Korea.
My parents took a 7-hour bus ride from my hometown to the airport in advance to see me off, and my mother was wiping her tears and my father was full of worries and repeatedly told me to take care of myself.
When I went to Korea for the first time at the age of 20, I was upset, but more excited and looking forward to it.
Before I left, I lied to my parents and told them that 30,000 RMB would cover all my expenses in order to give them peace of mind and not to add to the burden of my family. In fact, when I arrived in this unfamiliar country, I only had 2,000 RMB left in my pocket, which was only enough to live here for two months, so I started looking for a job the next day.
When I first arrived, I was unfamiliar with the environment and didn’t speak Korean well enough, so I only found a job distributing leaflets. Every day, I handed out 1,000 leaflets, going from the top of the building to the bottom, not leaving a single house behind. The highest building had 50 floors, and after a day of running, my legs were so sore and heavy that I could hardly walk the next day.
The job was hard, but I worked for a semester because it paid well, earning 80,000 won (about 459 yuan) a day, which covered my living expenses in Korea.
Usually, I would work from 3:00 pm to 11:00 pm, eat some company-issued noodles with milk to wrap up my stomach, and then catch the last subway back to school.
When I was on exchange in Korea, I took a picture with my classmates wearing Korean clothes.
Six months later, I spoke Korean well enough to get a job at a barbecue restaurant, where I was paid 8,000 won per hour.
In the barbecue restaurant, my daily work is to serve dishes, deliver food, wash dishes, and mop the floor, which I’m used to doing at home since I was a kid, so there is no technical difficulty. The owner of the barbecue restaurant liked me because of my good looks and quick work. She always joked that I should be her daughter-in-law and gave me a 300,000 won red envelope on holidays.
During my year in Korea, I didn’t go home or go anywhere outside of Busan to save money; many of the clothes and shoes I wore were worn out by the International Students in my dorm.
I woke up every morning at 7:00 a.m. to go to class, and finished my work at 11:00 p.m. I was busy with survival and study all year round, like a gyroscope that couldn’t stop.
But with my own efforts, I not only survived in Korea, but also passed Korean 6 (the highest level). When I returned home after the exchange, I gave my mom 10,000 yen from the money I had saved from my part-time job, bought cigarettes and alcohol for my grandfather and my father, and bought skin care products for my aunt.
A group photo of my mom, brother and I after returning to China in 2012.
At that time, just in time for the end of the school’s fall recruitment, I had to rush to join a North Korean trading company in Dandong. My exchange experience gave me a language advantage. I usually translated documents in the office and was occasionally taken by my boss to dinner parties as a translator.
It seemed to be a glamorous job, but the salary was very small, only 1200 RMB, which was the money I could earn back in three days of handing out leaflets in Korea.
I quit this job after 5 months, when I resigned in December, I thought I could just earn some money to go home for the New Year, so I joined a restaurant in Dandong as a waiter, with a monthly salary of 2,500 yuan.
The restaurant was a joint venture between the Chinese and North Korean owners, and because I knew I could speak Korean, the Chinese owner let me go with him on a business trip to North Korea as a translator, and when I came back, I was released from manual work and put into the office to do administrative work, and my salary went up from 2,500 yuan to 3,000 yuan.
As a waiter in that restaurant, I (first from the left) was the only one who could speak Korean.
At the same time, I also found a job teaching Chinese as a foreign language online, starting at 6:00 pm and ending at 10:00 pm every night, earning over $2,000 a month.
For a girl like me, who had just graduated from school, my monthly income of nearly 6,000 RMB was quite substantial in the small city of Dandong. I thought the days would go on like this, but then the bad news suddenly came from my family.
On November 30, 2013, a day I will always remember, my father called me and asked me to go back, saying that my mother had terminal cancer. The news hit me like a bolt from the blue.
Ever since the car accident in high school, my mother was the first to stand up for me no matter what I did. She never told me that she was not feeling well, for fear that I would worry.
Before my mother got sick, I went to the hot spring with her.
In order to take care of my mother wholeheartedly, I quit my job. With my brother having to spend money on school and my father having no income, the family’s financial situation took a sharp turn for the worse. During the day, I was doing a single part-time job online for two or three dollars, and at night, I continued to teach classes online to Koreans learning Chinese.
On May 20, 2014, my mother’s condition deteriorated and she still left this world. After the grief, I was left with a penniless home. My father was unemployed and my brother was in high school. With no one to rely on, I had to get my act together, and in less than a month, I started a Korean language tutoring class with a friend in the city.
Perhaps my friend and I were too eager to make money, but we didn’t take into account the fact that there are very few people in small cities who need to learn Korean, so we finally recruited two students, one for me and one for her, and we didn’t even get our costs back.
My friend and I (first from the left) run our own Korean language course, which we advertise on the street.
When I was at a loss, the department head of my last company called me and said that a Korean-owned hospital in Dandong was looking for an administrative assistant with a monthly salary of 2,500 yuan. When I was stuck, I accepted the job without thinking.
The job of administrative assistant was not too tiring, I started work at eight o’clock and finished at four thirty in the afternoon. I had to get up at four o’clock to prepare for the class, and after the class, I put down my headphones and ran downstairs to catch the company shuttle. After I finished my class at 4:30 pm, I continued to teach my students until 11:00 pm.
With less than five hours of sleep a day, I was seriously sleep deprived. The office manager saw that I looked like I couldn’t wake up every day and asked me what was wrong. I told her the whole story, she did not blame me, but also very concerned about me, after noon every day let me sleep on her sofa.
This is the house I was renting in Dandong.
One day, the director asked me why I didn’t go to Korea to work. I was at a loss for words, in fact, I always wanted to go to Korea again, but suffering from the lack of contacts and opportunities, no money, and can only think about it. The director told me that there was a new policy that if you had studied in Korea before, you could get a five-year multiple-entry visa.
When I expressed my desire to go to Korea, she not only bought me a ferry ticket to Incheon, but also asked her friends in Korea to help me find a place to stay, fearing that I was unfamiliar with the country.
On May 21, 2016, at 1:00 p.m., I boarded the ship to Incheon, South Korea.
Luckily, everything went better than expected. The day after I arrived in Korea, I found a job in a barbecue restaurant, where I could work from 9am to 10pm, with a monthly salary of about 12,000 RMB.
Most of the customers at the barbecue restaurant were rich people, and since I was the youngest waitress and cute, I received 20,000 to 30,000 won in tips for every trip I made to the restaurant, which was a good amount of money for a month.
Considering the financial pressure from my mother’s death from cancer earlier, I bought a business insurance policy for my father and me at 5,000 won per year each, as I had just saved some money.
This is the insurance I purchased for my father in 2016.
About three months later, one day I casually posted a circle of friends, positioned in South Yangju, South Korea, and a Korean student I had taught on the front line happened to live nearby and, upon seeing my dynamic, extremely kindly wanted to invite me for a meal. From the conversation, I vaguely felt that he wanted to have a relationship with me.
The meal is scheduled around the Mid-Autumn Festival. The first look at him in person is not as good-looking as the photos, I was a little lost, and he stood up, the heart is a cold half, I’m 5.8 meters, he is also higher than I two centimeters it, the heart instantly lost the idea of an object.
But regardless of height, his Cambridge master’s degree, LG Group’s job, wealthy family of origin, which one of the conditions singled out, are out of my reach.
After the meal, this student had nothing to do but to send me messages, so there was a second, third and fourth meeting …… He was 4 years older than me and wanted to get married early when he met the person he wanted.
And at that time, because I was working alone in a foreign country, eager to quickly gain a foothold in this country, coupled with time, also impressed by his attentiveness and thoughtfulness, so met less than a year, agreed to his pursuit. in May 2017, the two of us officially married with a license.
The student, who later became my husband, said it was love at first sight for me.
Before I came to Korea, I had three blind dates in China. The first was a civil servant, the second was a soldier, and the third was a doctor at a mental hospital. All three failed to meet me for one simple reason – I was from a rural area, my family was poor, and I had a brother who was not married.
After these three failed blind dates, I was once discouraged, thinking that with their own conditions is probably very difficult to find an object, never thought there would be a Korean husband.
I remember the first time we met, he asked me if I had a dream, he asked, I fell into tears, thinking of my poor family of origin, thinking of their own way never breathe, there is an inexplicable aggravation inside. I told him that I had no Dreams. If I had to say a dream, it would probably be to earn more money.
My husband did not dislike my origins and grew to love me more and more. His parents are also kind and open-minded people, and although they were a little dissatisfied with me at first, they knew how to respect their son’s choice. Now a few years have passed, my two lovely children were born one after another, and the old couple loved it so much.
I have two sons, the older one is 4 years old and looks like his father, and the younger one is 2 years old and looks like me.
Of course, because of the differences in upbringing and Education level, my husband and I inevitably have some conflicts in our lives, especially in the education of children.
As a northeastern woman, I am impatient, although I have higher education, but due to the immersion of parents and neighbors since childhood, the children are always shouting and scolding. My husband was very unhappy about this, after all, he studied in the UK for many years, adhering to the concept of happy education, supporting children to fully release their nature.
Despite the small frictions, our relationship has grown stronger over the past four years of marriage, and this is due to our mutual understanding. My husband was born in Korea to a fairly wealthy family, and it is not too much to say that he is the “second generation of the rich”, but we both agree that we have to create our own happy life, so after marriage, we did not nibble on the old man, but started our own business.
Today we live in a 100 square meter house in Seoul and employ a live-in aunt, so our standard of living is middle class at best.
When my father was working in Korea, my husband and I took him out to dinner at a restaurant.
Before the outbreak, I brought my father to Korea, and he found a job as a sweeper at a construction site, earning more than 10,000 RMB a month, more than enough to support himself. My younger brother is graduating from college this year and is interning at a company in Jiangsu, so he’s not as much of a worry anymore.
My own life is also slowly on track today. This journey may have been lucky, but never just lucky. All my subsequent encounters began with the desire to live a happy life.
And I firmly believe: once a person has a direction, one day will arrive.
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