"Endurance and Revenge" - 12-year-old brick maker
The researcher noticed several self-made tattoos on Yi's left arm. They said, "Endurance and Revenge." "Who made them?" the interviewer asked. "My friends," Yi answered, showing no emotion.
At the time of the first interview, Yi was an orphan whose father, mother, three-year-old sister, and two uncles' entire families had all died from AIDS. The only relatives surviving were Yi's 15-year-old sister, his 80-year-old grandfather, and his 79-year-old grandmother. Yi and his sister had to quit school the year before the interview because their aging grandfather had been unable to pay the school fees.
Four months later, Yi's grandfather had become a beggar, and his grandmother was an invalid and bedridden. Yi was working in a brick kiln 12 hours a day. "I earn 10 Yuan ($1.50 U.S.) a day." That is the only income for the whole family.
Unlike the first time, Yi did not cry during the second interview. The homemade tattoos on his arm, indicating, "endurance and revenge" seemed to summarize the feelings of the untalkative young man.
During the interviewers' third visit, Yi refused to speak. When interviewers excused themselves from the grandfather's invitation to stay for a meal and prepared to leave, Yi refused researchers' gesture to shake hands. "I don't wish to be touched," he told them. Those were his only words.