XIAO YING: I’m having a dispute with my former employer so my dreams are all about that. It’s a very annoying situation; I hope I can solve this problem soon. One night I dreamed that they paid me a compensation. In the dream, they said: “Here’s your compensation, you can go now. It was wrong not to pay social security for you. Now we recognize this mistake.” Then they gave me the money and I left the factory. That was the whole dream, it was very short.
    I’m from Guangdong. Until recently I was working in a jewellery factory in Panyu City, but I got fired. I complained to my employer because he didn’t want to pay social security for me, so he fired me. I tried to talk to him; I said if he wanted to fire me he should pay me some compensation. But he didn’t pay me anything. So I turned to the labour department for help. But the labour department didn’t help me; they took sides with my employer. Now I really need someone who can help me, I dream about this every night.
    I remember a dream I had while I was in primary school. At that time, my grandfather had already been dead for several years. It was a cold winter night. In my hometown, when we’re cold we put a hot piece of carbon in a porcelain bottle and put the bottle inside a bamboo lantern. It’s called a hot lantern. So on that evening, I had been doing homework until late at night and I felt very cold so I took the hot lantern to bed with me. That’s quite dangerous, actually. I fell asleep and dreamed about my grandfather. He told me that something would happen at a particular hour, I don’t remember at what hour exactly. I asked him what would happen, but he just said “Something.” I asked him again and again but he wouldn’t tell me. He said: “You’ll find out when it happens.” I got scared and insisted with my questions, but he didn’t answer. Then I woke up.
    The first thing I noticed was that my quilt was very hot. I wondered why, and then I saw that the porcelain bottle had tipped over and the carbon had fallen onto the quilt and scorched it. I jumped out of bed and put the quilt in a basin full of water to put out the fire. Then I went back to bed. I was afraid that my mom would scold me because she always told me not to take the hot lantern to bed with me.
    The next day my mom asked me why the water in the basin was all black and where all the burnt cloth came from. I lied to her and said that nothing had happened but she didn’t believe me. She said: “You took the hot lantern to bed with you, didn’t you?” I still wanted to deny it, but my mom said she had gone to my room and seen the burnt quilt. She told me to be more careful. I was very lucky that my grandfather warned me in the dream, he saved me. I don’t want to imagine what would have happened if he hadn’t appeared in my dream. I’m very grateful to him.