Starbucks joked about drinking coffee.

I struggled for eighteen years to sit in Starbucks and have coffee with you.

My white-collar friends, if I were a migrant worker who came to Shanghai to work before graduating from junior high school, would you sit at Starbucks and have coffee with me? No, absolutely not. Comparing our growth process, you will find that I need to make great efforts for something that you can easily get.

From the moment I was born, my identity was completely different from yours, because I can only apply for a rural hukou, while you are an urban hukou. If you keep your rural hukou when you grow up, you will not be able to find a formal job in the city and enjoy old-age insurance and medical insurance. So I want to go to the city, and I want to get your born big city hukou through my own struggle.

Getting into college is my only chance to jump out of the farm. I want to study hard, from primary school to junior high school, from junior high school to senior high school entrance examination. I fought bravely on the wooden bridge and watched my classmates fall in batches, and the road ahead became narrower and narrower. I, a leader, don't know whether to be happy or worried. The fierce competition makes me dare not neglect. Apart from studying homework, I don't have time to take care of my hobbies, and the school doesn't have these courses to develop my personal strengths. On the first day of entering high school, the headmaster told us that there is only one goal for the college entrance examination in these three years. So I took Dai Yue, got up at 5: 30 in the morning and went to bed at 1 1 at night. Even on the night of Mid-Autumn Festival, I recited political questions under the street lamp.

Moreover, your pressure for further studies is much less, the competition is not so fierce and your homework is not very heavy. You can get a chance to walk in the third year of high school, even if your grades are poor, you will be swept into the local third-rate university, and I may have to get high marks in that third-rate university before I can enter, because there are too many places left for Shanghai among the places allocated by region.

Our examination papers are the same, but the scores are different, but when we all get the admission notice, the tuition fees paid are the same. 6,000 yuan per person per year, the tuition fee for four years alone will be 24,000 yuan, plus the accommodation fee per person per year 1500 yuan, as well as the books and materials fee of 1000 yuan per year, and the living expenses of 4,000 yuan per year (only eating the school cafeteria), totaling 50,000 yuan for four years. In 2003, a university in Shanghai raised the tuition fee to 6,543,800 yuan per person per year on the grounds of "superior environment of the newly-built Songjiang campus", which means that the tuition fee for four years is only 40,000 yuan, and other expenses are added, totaling 66,000 yuan. 66,000 yuan may not be a heavy burden for a Shanghai urban family, but for a rural family, it is simply a lifetime savings. My hometown is an open eastern coastal province and a big agricultural province. Compared with the inland provinces in the west, it should be said that the economic level is relatively good, but there is not much money left after a hard year. Take a family of four with two children as an example. Excluding all kinds of daily necessities, a family can save up to 3,000 yuan a year, so 66,000 college expenses mean 22 years of savings! The premise is that no family member can be seriously ill, and another child must be deprived of the right to go to college no matter how excellent his academic performance is, because the family can only provide so much money. I am very lucky. Finally, I paid the tuition fee for the first year by patchwork and student loans. It's really not a taste to look at those students who are holding the admission notice and depressed to the point where the whole family is desperate. Universities in the era of educational industrialization recruit not only excellent students, but also wealthy parents.

When I came to Shanghai, a big city, I found that compared with my classmates, I was really broke. I can't draw or act.

Playing musical instruments, I don't know Hong Kong and Taiwan stars, I don't know MP3, and I don't know what a walkman is. In order to understand the concept of "warehouse supermarket" in marketing management class, I watched it curiously in Metro for a day. I have never seen such a rich product. I have never touched a computer, so I spent half a year in the school computer room to learn the basic knowledge and operational skills you learned in middle school. My English is deaf-mute English, and my pronunciation is incomprehensible to both China and foreigners. It's not my fault. There are no foreign teachers in our hometown, so teachers can't read correctly. How can we teach students to pronounce correctly? Without a good foundation, I can only spend another year correcting my pronunciation. I really envy the students in big cities who are versatile and have such a wide range of knowledge, and I can only study. When I was a student, I had to study, take exams, and go to higher schools, because only when I was admitted to a university could I come among you and study with you, and everything should be subject to this goal.

I can stand the ridicule of my classmates in the city. I can't eat a meat dish for several weeks. I can soak in the library and study room all day on Saturday and Sunday. I can watch the lovers in the campus ballroom enviously on the way back from self-study on weekends. I can run around the playground on lonely and boring nights ... I think, when I graduate, I will earn a salary in this metropolis, and I will be a Shanghai citizen like your peers who grew up in the city.

Finally graduated, with a monthly salary of about 2000. Maybe you think the money should be enough for you to spend, but for me, I still have to rent a house, pay the electricity, water, coal and telephone bills, and pay a student loan. I also want to send some money to my family so that my siblings can continue their studies. The money left is only enough for me to eat 1.2% of the meal every meal, so I still can't sit in Starbucks and have coffee with you!

Now, I have finished my master's degree in Shanghai, and now I have a job with an annual salary of 70 thousand to 80 thousand. Struggle for 18 years, and now I can finally sit with you for coffee. I have been integrated into this international metropolis, no different from my white-collar friends around me, but I can't forget those hard years in the struggle, those former classmates and those long-cherished wishes that can never be realized. So I wrote the above words in the first person way, which is the most typical portrayal of the struggle of children of civilians in small and medium-sized cities and rural areas. Every time I see those students who are struggling with their fate, I always have a heavy sense of responsibility in my heart.

When I was studying for a master's degree in Shanghai, I once discussed a marketing case of David newspaper. One of my classmates, who had three years' working experience at that time, is now the personnel administrative manager of a Sino-foreign joint venture company. He put forward a plan: let David Paper develop high-grade facial tissue products and push them to the 900 million farmers' market. I was surprised at her courage in putting forward the plan. At that time, I asked her if she knew how to deal with the greasy face of the peasant brother after eating. She looked at me doubtfully, and I wiped my mouth twice with the back of my hand. She looked contemptuous of such indecent actions. In a macroeconomics class, another classmate of mine criticized laid-off workers and teenagers who dropped out of school to go to agriculture: "Eighty percent of them didn't work hard when they were young, so they deserve to be laid off now!" Those students can work while studying. It is said that many students can earn thousands of dollars in a summer vacation. Do you still have to worry about tuition? "My classmate is too ignorant of rural areas in poverty-stricken areas.

I was born in the mid-1970s, and my peers are gradually becoming the mainstay of society. Our decision will affect social and economic development. Fairness in this world is relative, which is not terrible, but it is very terrible for young people who grew up in superior environment and those who have suffered for a long time and now have forgotten it.

It took me 18 years to sit down and have coffee with you.