One post tagged with "Story of an Ordinary Person"

Old Ma, whose proper name was Ma Desheng, felt he'd lived a rather "failed" life. His parents gave him the name for good luck, hoping he'd amount to something. But those characters "Desheng," meaning "victorious," felt somewhat ironic attached to Old Ma. He'd been drifting along for nearly thirty years in a half-dead neighborhood factory in the north of the city. The factory's fortunes were waning year by year. And him? Just a gatekeeper, handling mail on the side, earning a pittance each month – enough to keep him from starving but never full.