I was intelligent enough to make up my own mind. I not only had freedom of choice, I had freedom of expression.

But later that day, the streets of Kweilin were strewn with newspapers reporting great Kuomintang victories, and on top of these papers, like fresh fish from a butcher, lay rows of people - men, women and children who had never lost hope, but had lost their lives instead.

Now I was a tiger that neither pounced nor lay waiting between the trees. I became an unseen spirit.

When you lose your face..., it is like dropping your necklace down a well. The only way you can get it back is to fall in after it.

I was intelligent enough to make up my own mind. I not only had freedom of choice, I had freedom of expression.

I felt like a rich vagabond who had passed through the world paving my way with gold fairy dust, then realizing too late that the path disintegrated as soon as I passed over it.

The life we receive is not always what we choose.