BEIJING: As a young woman, Pei Aimin, now 49, hid her natural gift for writing, hoping nobody in her farming village would notice and accuse her of a lack of devotion to work and family.
That was the way of things when Pei was young in Shangxin village in Minqin county of Wuwei, Gansu province, and in similar places in China. In the past, girls often dropped out of school at an early age to follow a long-established pattern: They married and settled in to the regular routines of rural life.
A few, like Pei, however, yearned for the beauty and breadth of a wider world and looked for ways to express themselves. She sought solace in literature and in the process discovered her own ability to write.
After her marriage, she had to create secret opportunities. Sometimes she would water useless land just so she could read or write outdoors without being observed. Sometimes she sat under a tree, expressing her feelings on a pad of paper about the running water and warbling birds – until somebody approached, and she would hurriedly hide the papers and pen.
–The Daily Mail-China Daily news exchange item
