A ginger vendor in Beijing who didn't finish primary school has become a fresh face on the literary scene. Zhang Yue finds out why.
Like many rural people born in the early 1970s, Yao Qizhong didn't finish primary school because his family was poor.
Yet the 40-year-old, who has been selling ginger and garlic at a market in Beijing since 2002, has caused a small sensation by writing 200,000 characters about his childhood and family.
The stories he has written over the past three years are called For Love and More.
"I know my writing is not good but I want to recall what my family and I went through, coming from a rural village and moving to Beijing," he says. "My life, from being a poor farmer to a city resident, makes me feel thankful and treasure life."
As a ginger vendor, Yao gets up at 4:30 every morning, rides a second-hand bicycle for 40 minutes to the morning market, and puts out his wares.
The market is quiet in the early morning when customers are few. He then pulls out of his bag a stack of writing paper and a Xinhua Dictionary, borrowed from his son, and starts writing.
Yao holds his pen firmly, and writes every character slowly. He stops from time to time, looks up a new word in the dictionary, and then continues.
The market gets busy after 7:30 am, as customers arrive. While almost every vendor is crying loudly for more customers, Yao keeps writing.
When customers stop by and ask the price, Yao stops writing and serves them. But he also frequently asks his customers about some of the words he does not know.
"The sentences he wrote at first were broken, and with a lot of wrong words," says Yang Fengqin, a 78-year-old women living in the nearby community. "But the real stories he put down and his deep understanding of life truly amazed me."
Yang was the first reader of Yao's work. She used to go to the market early for fresh fruits and vegetables, and one morning in 2009, she noticed Yao was writing something.
"At first I thought he was writing letters to his family," she says. "But then I noticed the man writing every day. That made me curious."
Yao, with just four years at primary school, starts his story this way:
"I was born in Fuyang county, Anhui province. The province is the home for some great leaders of China. I am very proud of my hometown. But the place is also one of the poorest regions in China."
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