Examined Life: Xiaoqiong Zheng's Story and Mine

Abstract

Translated and introduced the People’s Literature award-winning essay Iron, written by migrant worker & poet Xiaoqiong Zheng, and weaved in my own story with Zheng's, finding parallels below the surface. Zheng’s work reveals "another China”, “another life”, and “another reality”; it speaks not just to the life of a factory worker in China but to the larger issue of living in China now, the spiritual as well as literal poverty. Reflected on how we have both searched for our individual voices; Zheng’s being a secret writer while working in a factory; I spent years feeling unhappy and misfit in the workplace, until eventually discovered a passion for the English speaking world, and set out molding a new identity defined by that passion.