Chapter One: The Cesspool
第一章：糞坑
The damp, overcast land of the West Sichuan Plain, along with the mountains that ringed its borders, turned stark white during a rare, heavy snowfall in the 1990s. There was no auspicious sign in the air — only a frozen, numbing desperation of survival. And it was in the midst of this very blizzard, whose biting chill can still be felt in the marrow of my bones today, that I was born.
Coinciding with mainland China’s One-Child Policy era, I became the only child in my family. The freezing weather turned my entire body purple. My parents, lacking experience in childbirth, assumed something was terribly wrong with me and rushed to the nearest clinic. There, a quack doctor injected me with several consecutive shots of penicillin, but my condition never improved. To everyone’s surprise, once they simply bundled me up in more warm clothes, my body stopped turning purple. Yet, whether it was due to the lingering effects of those unnecessary injections, I constantly suffered from fevers and colds before the age of eleven. When we finally went to a major hospital for a proper check-up, we discovered I was severely allergic to penicillin. From then on, any medical treatment required extreme caution, and doctors had to switch to alternative antibiotics.
Later on, I threw myself into school sports. My father also made sure to buy fresh milk from a dairy farm every single day throughout one winter, boiling it for me to drink to build up my constitution. By the time I graduated from primary school, I had already outgrown the boys, becoming the tallest person in my entire class. From primary school through university, I consistently served as the class monitor. It was through this that I forged the confidence to look men in the eye as equals later in society.
Over the years, I won countless awards in literature, sports, and core academic subjects. Every time I received a new accolade, I would silently place it inside the glass display of a classic mahogany cabinet I had inherited from my grandfather. Then came the day I was preparing to move abroad. As I was sorting through my childhood stuff, what caught my father’s eye were the piles of red award certificates, making him realise with utter amazement just how many I had amassed.
I remember that my mother occasionally brought up an old memory. She spoke with a hint of a joke in her voice, but hearing it left me with a lingering sense of dread. She said that right before I was born, she thought she just needed to take a dump, and almost dropped me straight into a village cesspool during the early days of the Reform and Opening-Up era.
Yet over three decades later, when I woke up in a cramped rental house in Sydney’s crowded Alexandria, the terror left behind by the various forms of enslavement and the torture inflicted upon me by my parents in my childhood still followed me like a shadow.
第一章：糞坑
川西平原那片陰濕的土地，以及平原周邊圍繞著的山脈，在一場九〇年代罕見的大雪中變得雪白。空氣裡沒有祥瑞，只有一種凍僵了的、生存的窘迫，在這場至今仍能從骨縫裡透出冷氣的大雪中，我出生了。
正好趕上中國大陸的計劃生育年代，由此我成了家裡的獨女。這寒冷的天氣凍得我全身發紫，沒有生育經驗的父母，以為我有毛病，找到就近的診所，庸醫接連給我打了好幾針青黴素（盤尼西林），但始終沒見好轉。沒想到後來只是增加了保暖衣物，我的身子便不再泛紫。但不知是不是那幾針落下的病根，十一歲以前我經常感冒發燒。後來去大醫院檢查，才發現我對青黴素嚴重過敏，此後治病不得不格外謹慎，換用其他抗生素。
後來我積極參與學校的體育運動，父親也持續一個冬天每天從牛奶農場買新鮮的牛奶熬煮給我飲用，以增強體魄。小學畢業時，我已經超過男生的身高，成為全班身高第一的人。從小學到大學，我一直是所在班級的班長，由此樹立了後來我在社會中平視男性的自信一面。
多年來，在文學、體育、基礎教育課程領域我榮獲了無數獎項。每獲得一個新獎項，我就默默地放進從爺爺處繼承的一個古典紅木書櫃的玻璃窗內。直到後來我準備出國，父親看到我整理東西，才驚訝於原來我獲得過如此多的獎狀。期間母親有時和我提起一樁舊事，語氣帶點玩笑，聽在我耳裡卻心有餘悸。她說我快出生時，她以為自己要拉屎，差一點把我拉進改革開放初期農村的糞坑裡。
而在三十多年後，當我在雪梨（悉尼）擁擠的亞歷山大區狹窄的租屋裡醒來，那些年幼時父母對我施加的種種奴役和酷刑留給我的驚恐，依然如影隨形。