Recording their youths

Updated:2011-09-28 18:13

(chinadaily.com.cn)

 

 

Wang Ming, born 1984, has worked more than 10 jobs to make a living.

I drifted around Hainan with my parents for a year. Because of me, my parents sold their house and took me with them to hide out in Hainan from the act I had committed. After staying in Hainan for about a year we went back to our hometown. My mother went to Beijing and I followed her soon after and my father came soon after that, and the three of us started our life of drifting.

When I got to Beijing I took the lifeguard certification test and worked all kinds of odd jobs: waiter, lifeguard, cook, cashier. I distributed purified water, mineral water, I sold sliced mutton — so many different jobs, until one day I saw one of those things in the paper saying "realize your dreams of stardom." I started acting and my mom began taking me all around Beijing for gigs, thinking this was a way out to a better future. In this way I passed more than a year, a year and a half, two years of hard living in Beijing. Perhaps everyone who has come to Beijing from outside has experienced this kind of hard living. I will never forget it myself: the hardships, the humiliations, the rejections.

Later because of family reasons and economic necessity, my mother decided to go abroad to work as a nanny. The instant I saw her leave, I swore at the airport that I would make it so that she could come home quickly, that I would grow up and work as quickly as possible.

Then I went to Xiamen to see a friend. When I got there I drifted on 50 yuan for more than 20 days. I slept in the train station until in the end I found work as a singer in a bar. From then on life got better for me, I made a lot of money. Then I started to throw money around, I started to become very extravagant to the point where I was living completely differently from the way I had before. Later I met my current wife and we spent our days squandering our money and living a decadent life. Every day we'd go play cards, sing karaoke, do drugs, and as time went on we started to feel these days were meaningless. Suddenly fate struck and I found an opportunity working as a bodyguard for a performer, and from then on I went everywhere with him, flying to cities all over China every day. When I decided not to do it anymore it was to get married.

Once I got married I moved back to Shenyang from Xiamen. I suddenly felt I couldn't just do nothing so I decided to invest in making films and learn how to be a film producer. I thought I could do all the work myself, and as a result I lost all the money in one perfect misstep, including the money my family and friends had lent me, everything, completely, entirely.