Selling hair to buy a Pen

Sijin was born into hardship. Her biological parents, too poor to raise her, sold her twice during childhood. Eventually, a couple in Chengdu adopted her, but they too lived on the financial edge. For much of her youth, Sijin was raised by her aunt, who was given just 300 yuan per month (about $41 USD) to care for her.

At school, her aunt gave her only 0.5 to 1 yuan (7 to 14 cents USD) for lunch. A proper meal in the school cafeteria cost 5 to 6 yuan (about $0.70 to $0.85 USD), so she survived on plain rice mixed with pork fat and salt. If she saved carefully for days, she could afford a cold noodle or spicy snack—small luxuries in her otherwise sparse world.

When she once saw a classmate’s beautiful fountain pen priced a little over 10 yuan (around $1.40 USD), she knew her adoptive parents would never buy it for her. Instead, she sold her long hair to a barber. They chopped it off unevenly without concern for appearance. The next day, her classmates laughed at her. But she got the pen.

Back home with her adoptive parents, life wasn’t kinder. When their business struggled, they took out their frustration on her. Even if she cooked diligently, they sometimes smashed her bowl, calling her a jinx.

Writing as Escape

Amid these harsh conditions, Sijin found solace in writing. She began publishing on Haitang Literature City, a Taiwanese online platform popular for NSFW danmei fiction. The site operated on a pay-to-read model, and despite using a pseudonym and having no formal publication channel in China, she managed to accumulate over 800,000 views and earned about 4,000 yuan (~$550 USD) across several years.

Then in late May 2025, her world changed.

She received a phone call from the Lanzhou Public Security Bureau. They informed her she was suspected of a crime and must travel to Lanzhou for questioning.

“In the past 20 years of my life, I never imagined that my first flight would be to a police station in Lanzhou.”

To save money, she carefully compared flight options and chose a cheaper airline. Looking out from the cabin window at the tiny mountains and cities below, she felt—for the first time—how small and powerless she really was. It turned out that the first time she ever boarded a plane, she was on her way to turn herself in.

Upon landing, she was met not only by fear but by a climate utterly unlike Chengdu. Lanzhou was frigid. She shivered through her interrogation. She later described the entire experience as terrifying and humiliating. She wasn't alone. Other young women had also been summoned across provinces for writing similar fiction. Some reported that they were stripped naked during the interrogation and forced to read their own stories aloud in front of others.

Sijin pleaded with police not to contact her family. She would handle it alone. But her university, aiming to force her to drop out even from her undergraduate program, directly notified her mother. That call prompted her mother—who had never flown before either—to board a plane for the first time in her life to retrieve her daughter.

Though Sijin managed to retain her undergraduate degree, her graduate school offer was revoked. The school then forcibly sent her home.

A Public Plea

Sijin recounted the experience in a heartfelt post on Weibo, laying bare both her personal history and the ordeal in Lanzhou. She wrote not just as a defendant but as someone asking the world to see the whole girl—not just the alleged crime.

“If I could turn back time, I would still choose to write,” she wrote. “I’ll keep writing. Just need a moment to reset, then continue learning and creating on proper platforms. I only hope the law can read between the lines. See the girl who saved every coin on an empty stomach. The girl who sold her hair for a pen. The girl who believed that words could crack the wall of fate. Please give all of us a fair result.”

She ended her post with a final note for anyone else summoned to Lanzhou: bring a coat. It’s cold.

Aftermath and Censorship

Her post was instantly viral. Shared over 20,000 times, it resonated deeply with netizens who saw her not as a criminal but as a struggling young woman punished for creative expression. The public reaction was swift. Weibo later removed her post, but by then the damage to Lanzhou’s police reputation was done.

Their Weibo account became a battlefield. Citizens left scathing comments on unrelated posts, accusing the police of ignoring real crimes in favor of targeting impoverished female authors for writing NSFW fiction. Hashtags about her case spread. Boycotts of Lanzhou were called. Even holiday greetings from the police were met with anger.

Sijin’s story became a symbol: not only of literary censorship but of how the legal system treats poor, voiceless individuals trying to survive.

And despite all she lost, her words remain clear:

She would still choose to write.