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A Li from Dandong in Liaoning province is 22 years old. At 16 years old, just graduated from middle school, her parents broke up and left her. A Li has been away from home for 6 years, and has never returned. Every time she mentions her family, she is filled with rage. "I have done all these filthy things to take revenge on them," she says.
A Li went into a life of prostitution and came into contact with a man who she called her "boss", and who forced her to inject heroin into her arm for the first time. After three days unconscious, she was injected several more times. From then on, she was addicted. In this way, her "boss" controlled her and other girls.
A Li had a pretty face. As long as she put some makeup over her wounds, no one would notice.
Every night, A Li accompanied her "customers" to earn tips for living expenses and buying drugs.
Sometimes, she considered running away from her "boss".
She tried several times, but it was never long before she was forced to return for more heroin.
A Li had no idea even of what day it was. Time is simply divided into day and night; days spent sleeping and injecting, nights working on the streets for the boss. As soon as night fell, she would put on her makeup and force her weakening body out to solicit customers. At the end of a long night, she went home to take heroin and sleep before dawn. Everyday the same thing.
A reporter once followed her for 24 hours, and found she ate almost nothing the whole day, but injected heroin 3 times and smoked 2 packs of cigarettes. In a moment of reality, she once begged the reporter: "I want to swear off heroin. I want to stay alive. Can you help me?"
A Li's heroin addiction takes hold again. She clasps her mouth, smoking, sweating and agitated.
A Li buys heroin.
A Li had to take a grain of heroin (about 1 gram) every day, which meant she had to earn at least RMB 300 yuan. Satisfying her addiction had become her only goal.
The only part of her body she could inject heroin.
A Li falls asleep after injecting.
A Li told the reporter: "Once a woman is addicted to heroin, even G Cup breasts will shrivel."
A Li brushes her teeth, hugging her little dog.
With the help of a donor, A Li is sent to an Addiction Treatment Centre
A Li struggles to free herself of heroin's control with the help of staff of the Addiction Treatment Centre.
A Li said: "Now I have two big bowls of rice each meal and I've put on 5 kilograms. I feel like a normal woman again."
Looking at a photo from before her treatment, A Li can't believe her own eyes.
Leaving the Addiction Treatment Centre, A Li does not know what her future will be.
(Translated by Helena Zhang and proofread by David Kellaway, www.lifeofguangzhou.com)
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