First Hand History

"And it was the smell of the fires, initially, but once the fires subsided, then was the smell of - dead things. "

"Stay true to who you are and what you believe in."

"I thought I was being mistreated because I had to work all the time but as it turned out that was the best thing that ever happened to me."

"She one time, she scared me half to death and started chasing me"

"...farmers do very well when everybody else is doing very well..."

"The Hukou system... is a direct cause of economic and social inequality... Lots of rural workers move to cities to get higher paid jobs... Their young children were left in the village to be taken care by grandparents... They usually suffer from psychological problems caused by the long term separation from their parents."

"I believed that my fate, my future was based more on my caste than the merit of my grades. "

"...When I was a kid there [was] not enough [food] and a lot of people around the country [did] not have enough food to eat."

"I was treated differently many times."

"I think that everyone deserves a fighting chance in life. And sometimes people aren’t always equipped with the resources necessary on their own, and I’ve always wanted to help make sure that I can help the people who don’t always have the means to help themselves."

"So you have to imagine, 40 percent of the population is coming from the caste system, and they had 87 percent of the seats. So the rest, 60 percent of the population, had to apply for 13 percent of the seats."

"The Chinese tradition was, no matter where you are, no matter how far away you are from your family, Chinese New Year was always the time you come back for your family reunion..."