My Jade Gambling Journey

I was born into a well-off family in Ruijing, but when I was eight years old, my father became addicted to jade gambling. This kind of gamble is a game of chance—one cut can make you destitute, another can make you rich, or leave you in rags.

On my eighth birthday, my father tried his luck at jade gambling for the first time. I still remember how he took me to that raw material factory. A crowd watched as he sliced open the stone. In just a few seconds, the rough jade he bought for fifty thousand was suddenly worth eight hundred thousand! From that moment on, my father seemed possessed. He was gone for days at a time. I was too young to understand, but I remember my mother crying every day, and our family’s circumstances growing worse and worse.

Gradually, the car was sold. The house went next… The three of us were preparing to move into a small rented apartment. On the day we moved, my father sat alone by the balcony all night, smoking one cigarette after another. He promised my mother again and again that he would never gamble again, that he would turn his life around.

I remember that day vividly—my father was especially gentle with me, telling me to study hard and to take good care of my mother. I was fifteen then, still naive, believing that things would get better eventually. But I never could have imagined that on that very day, my father would jump from the eighteenth floor, separating us by life and death forever…

My father died, but he left behind a mountain of debt. With no other choice, my mother and I moved in with my uncle, Su Daqiang