A life saved First

Person | Xiao Yong

Editor's note: Former teen runaway Xiao Yong, now 20, lived on the streets of Kunming until he was placed in a foster family by the Yunnan Jiaxin Children Assistance Center. He spoke on the condition he could use an alias.

My father was a welder in a factory, and I actually had a happy childhood until I was 10. I remember he started to drink liquor like it was water, and whenever he got drunk he would beat my mother and me with anything he could get his hands on. My mother divorced him a year later.