XIAO JUN: Last night I dreamt I was on the suburban train. I don’t remember how the dream started. Anyway, there were a lot of people on the train and I was sitting at the window. Outside, there were hills covered with grass. Suddenly I saw a pheasant flying over the meadow. I took it as a good omen, maybe I’ll buy a lottery ticket tomorrow. I woke up soon after this dream. I always read the lottery results because I like buying lottery tickets. So when I dreamt about the pheasant, I thought I should try my luck tomorrow.
    I’m from the city of Luo Yang in the province of He Nan. I used to work for the gas company in Zhengzhou for some time. But I felt sort of restless in my home environment, so I decided to go to other places to work and have my own life. When I arrived in Guangzhou, I first worked in a printing press. The job was all right and I rented a house with my cousin so I had my own space. My job was to deliver goods to our customers, it was easy work. The workers were members of a brotherhood. I got along quite well with their leader, he often invited me to eat or to have a drink. But the job got boring after a while, so I quit. Now I’m working in this elevator factory. I make the floors of the elevators. This factory is better than most other factories in this area. For one thing, we have three days off per week, normally it’s only two. Also, they always pay us our salary on time. Other factories often put off the payment without any reason. Our work here is quite relaxed, only when we receive lots of orders it gets more busy. But if we have no orders, sometimes we don’t have anything to do for several days. It’s also quite a safe job because we use a sawing machine to cut out the steel boards.

BELOVED
ASPIRATION
TENSION
SUDDENLY
DISILLUSION
HARDSHIP
MOVEMENT
PERSISTENCE
ACHIEVEMENT
DESOLATION