Page 209 - updated on July

Yu Jihui: “A Stinking Old Ninth – A Tale of the Coal Capital” (updated on July 2020)

down upon. I was discriminated against. I was

insulted. I was a Stinking Old Ninth!

The above five unfavorable factors made it very

difficult for me to get married. But those were only

subjective unfavorable factors. In addition, there was

an objective factor. I was in the administrative

building of a coal mine - an area where there were a

lot more men than women. The small number of girls

valued themselves highly. As a Chinese proverb goes,

a thing is valued if it is rare. I lived in the dormitory

building of the coal mine. It was a red four-storey

Russian-style building. All the residents there were

workers or staff of Da Bai Lou（Big white). Most of

them lived there because their families were in other

parts of the country and some of them were

unmarried. Altogether, there were about six hundred

residents, but only three percent were women. The

single men would try their best to ingratiate

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