YIN JIA YING: I dream a lot. Sometimes I compare my dreams with reality afterwards, or I try to interpret them. Especially when I dream that I’m bathing in the sea or in a swimming pool. I read the ancient book Zhou Gong Jie Meng, which is about analyzing dreams, and it says that such dreams mean that you will receive attention by other people around you. This came true every time I had such a dream, which was maybe four or five times. The first time, I was sixteen or seventeen, I dreamt that a lot of people recognized me on the street, and then this really happened to me. I always had singing contests or performances after such dreams.
    But the most impressive dream I ever had was during a time when I was in big trouble. I had this dream two or three days before I fell ill. I remember it very clearly, it is a dream I will never forget. I dreamt that the police were about to execute somebody. It was not on an execution ground but out on the street. There were a lot of policemen with guns and they wanted to shoot someone. I was only watching but somehow, I don’t know what happened, I got caught as well and the police shot me. I don’t know why. Later in the dream I got up again and I saw that there was someone lying on the ground who looked just like me. I wondered what had happened, but I didn’t understand. I tried to talk to the policemen but they couldn’t hear me. Then I saw a mountain in the middle of my hometown and there were a lot of people dressed in white. One of them was their leader. I could talk to them and they could hear me, so I went with them.
    I didn’t know where we were going, and when I found out I was already kneeling down at the foot of a long stairway. I was on my knees with the stairway in front of me, a very, very long stairway. At the end of the stairway I saw Avalokitesvara, Tathagata, and many other Buddhas and supernatural beings. There were a lot of them. I addressed myself to them and said: “I’m still young, there are so many things I haven’t done yet, and I must go back and take care of my grandparents. I grew up with them.” That’s what I said to the Buddhas. Avalokitesvara said: “Go back to your house and clean it, there is something unclean in your house. After that, come back here.” Something unclean means a ghost or something like that. So I went back to my house to do what he had said.
    When I arrived at my house I saw something walking there that looked like a human shadow. I don’t know what I did, I just waved my hand at the shadow and it disappeared. Then I wanted to go back to the place where the Buddhas were, but my mother saw me and she didn’t want me to go. She tried everything to make me stay. I said: “I can’t stay, there are two people outside waiting for me.” I insisted that I had to leave. My mother said: “You could stay here just for two or three days, they won’t find you.” I said: “No, if they find me I’ll be in big trouble.” Then my mother grabbed my arm and held me back. She also locked the door, so I couldn’t leave. Then I woke up.
    Two or three days later I fell ill. It turned out to be acute appendicitis but at first I didn’t know that, so I didn’t go to the hospital until five or six days later. When I arrived at the hospital, I had already lost consciousness. It was very serious, the appendix had already ruptured, a few hours later it might not have been possible to save me anymore. So this dream made a deep impression on me, I always felt it really meant something in my life.
    A few days ago, I had a horrible dream. I dreamt that I killed somebody. He was bleeding, just like in a horror movie, his belly was cut open, it was horrible and terrifying. I wondered how that could have happened because I’m not an evil person at all. How could I kill somebody? And in this horrible way? I felt very bad after that dream. Then two days later someone got beaten up at the same place. His head was bleeding, there was blood all over the place. I thought that my dream had come true in this way and I was glad that it wasn’t as bad as I had dreamt. Then I felt better.
    I’m from the countryside of Chongqing city in the district of Rongchang. My hometown has always been quite poor and the education wasn’t good there. When I was a child, my parents were working in other places so I grew up with my grandparents. They taught me to read some classical books such as the Three Character Classic. I know a little about literature but I don’t know anything about modern science and education. I had no parents at my side to educate me. I quit school when I was in the second year of middle school. I was very young then and I wanted to work. My hometown was very poor and I wanted to earn some money as early as I could. So I trained as a security guard. At that time, everything happened through connections and introduction. Someone introduced me at the training institute and they paid him some money for introducing me. The training cost a little more than 1000 RMB. I thought that when I would start working, I would earn more than 600 RMB per month, so I could recover the training costs in two or three months.
    So I started working and never went back to school again. I went to many places in China during those years, such as Kunming, Jinghong, Shenzhen, Chongqing, Wuxi, Dongguan, and others. Now I’ve been working for twelve years and I’m going to be 26 in 2008. I worked in many different jobs. When I’m interested in some job, I try very hard to learn it, but when I know maybe 60 or 70 percent of the job, I’ll lose interest and quit. That’s why I’ve done a lot of different things. When I was in Kunming city in the province of Yunnan, I had a little stall where I sold “everything for 1 RMB”. I did this for one year. Later I worked in a car wash, then on a construction site, then in a restaurant. I also had my own small businesses, like selling beer and delivering water bottles. I didn’t do anything for a long time, though. I was too young.
    Then I started working in the advertising business, and that’s what I’m doing until this day. I’ve been doing this job for four years now, for me that’s quite a long time. I was just interested in advertising and it turned out to be comparatively easy for me. It allows me to make a living without having to do other jobs at the same time. Now I’m working with ads and decoration, I direct those kinds of things.