★ "Suffering is not something to be glorified, but everyone who walks out of suffering deserves to be celebrated."
★ China's answer to "Educated": a working-class girl forced to drop out at 13 spent 18 years going from restaurant waitress to PhD candidate at Hong Kong Polytechnic University.
★ Covered by dozens of major outlets including People's Daily, CCTV News, and Hong Kong Wen Wei Po. CCTV featured her story under the headline "90s Girl Who Served Tables Earns Her PhD."
★ Rated 8.3 on Douban; shortlisted for the "2024 Hall of Fame Annual Humanities List: Top 10 Books."
★ From rural Hebei to a Hong Kong doctorate, from migrant children's schools to a visiting scholar position in Finland—this is not motivational fluff, but a raw account of a wild grass growing through storms. Countless readers say they "cried reading it" yet felt "filled with strength."

How does a rural girl who never had a family's protection turn her fate around through her own strength, achieving self-redemption and crossing class boundaries?

This book chronicles the author's truth journey from being forced to drop out of school at age 13 to becoming a PhD candidate at Hong Kong Polytechnic University.
In 1993, Xiaoxiao was born in a village in Hebei Province. As a child, she drifted from city to city with her father, who took odd jobs, and attended a school for children of migrant workers. At the age of 13, she was forced to leave school and began a long career of working at the bottom of society—as a restaurant waitress, a courier company customer service representative, an assembly line worker, and more. She experienced hardships that no one her age should have to bear.
In 2011, while working as a customer service representative at a courier company in Beijing, an eighteen-year-old Xiaoxiao was told by a stranger, a truck driver: "You're smart. You should keep studying. Look into the adult self-study examination." That casual piece of kind advice completely changed the direction of her life.
She began working during the day and studying late into the night. Over four years, she passed more than 30 subjects, earning both an associate degree and a bachelor's degree in psychology from Peking University. But that was far from the end—she continued upward, gaining admission to Hong Kong Polytechnic University, completing her master's degree, and is now pursuing her doctorate. In 2023, she traveled to Finland as a visiting scholar.
Xiaoxiao divides her 30 years of life into three stages: the "camel," born into a poor village and pushed forward before she was even an adult; the "lion," driven by a strong desire for self-actualization; and the "child," returning to a childlike state of mind at age 30. She writes in the book: "In the process of growing wildly, I did not let anyone define me. I think living inside someone else's definition is both dangerous and exhausting."

The book contains no flowery language—only solid details of real life and truth pain and struggle. She writes: "I was destined to be a wild grass, resisting and growing wildly through the wind and rain."

Xiaoxiao
Real name: Wu Xiuxiu. Born in 1993 in rural Hebei Province.
Forced to drop out of school at age 13, she began working. At 18, she decided to take the adult self-study examination, working and studying simultaneously. Over four years, she passed more than 30 subjects, earning both an associate degree and a bachelor's degree in psychology from Peking University. She later gained admission to Hong Kong Polytechnic University, where she completed her master's degree. She is currently a PhD candidate and, in August 2023, traveled to Finland as a visiting scholar.