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Young woman turns her trash-collecting life into treasure
2019-02-22 
Li Siying, a 28-year-old woman from Changchun, Northeast China’s Jilin province, collects garbage on the street to support her family, Nov 26, 2018. [Photo/VCG]

Li Siying, a 28-year-old woman from Changchun, Northeast China’s Jilin province, has completed both a TV and a film script based on her tough life experiences, where she struggled to chase her dreams and support a family by collecting and selling garbage.

"We used to be a well-off family, but when I was 15 years old, misfortune fell upon us and changed everything. My father experienced a business failure. Our house, car and savings were all gone. My family went broke," Li recalled.

“It was a huge blow to my father and made him ill and leave us forever. My mother's condition had not been well before and it worsened at that time," Li added.

Since then, Li and her family went into poverty. Her mother could not work given her poor health. High rent in the town forced them to move to the suburbs. Li and her brother had to drop out of school and become the breadwinners.

Li once came to a restaurant and begged the owner to give her a job. "Please let me work here. I can wash the dishes and help in the kitchen. You can offer me lower wages as long as you allow me to work here," she said.

But the owner refused and told her that it was illegal to hire her, a 15-year-old minor.

As she walked the street one day, upset and with a heart full of worry, Li kicked a beverage bottle. Looking at the bottle, the idea came to her that she could collect and sell garbage to earn money for her family.

In summer, the garbage bins stank to high heaven and flies and bugs swarmed around. In winter, cold weather froze Li's hands. Besides, she was often cast strange and loathing looks from others.

In the face of all these difficulties, Li has shown extraordinary determination and an upbeat spirit.

"Life is hard for me but tears cannot help either. A day will pass no matter how you feel about it so why not live with smiles," she said.

Li Siying, a 28-year-old woman who makes a living by collecting garbage, writes a script based on her tough life experiences on a secondhand computer in Changchun, Northeast China’s Jilin province, Nov 26, 2018. [Photo/VCG]

Li had a dream of being a scriptwriter and she did not give up in spite of the hardships. She took a carbon rod from waste batteries to use as a pen for writing on waste paper. She learned typewriting from a book on computer fundamentals she found in a garbage bin. She also studied high school courses with the textbooks she recycled.

In 2010, Li found a job as a typist and hoped she no longer needed to live by collecting garbage. She bought a secondhand computer and tried to do her writing on it.

Two years later, her mother's cerebral infarction started to deteriorate. Her mother lost the ability to stand up and walk so she could not take care of herself. Once again, Li quit her job and resumed recycling garbage in order to look after her mother at home.

To rehabilitate her mother, Li accompanied her to practice walking at home. She also needed to go on the street to collect garbage during the day. In the evening, she kept writing.

In this way, Li completed a collection of works including poems and essays in 2012. In the following years, she finished a TV script consisting of 30 episodes and a 400,000-word novel inspired by her own experiences.

In 2018, a longer TV script and a movie script with the same title, which translates as "Sunflowers in Full Blossom", have been finished, bringing her another step closer to her dream.

The 62-episode TV script was adapted from her real-life experiences. Li hoped that, one day, she could see her work on the screen, inspiring more people with her story.

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