作者在中国的日子：首先自己的母亲被卖掉，然后自己被卖掉。

为了让买她的人贩子赎回她的母亲，答应与买她的人贩子一起生活，帮助其打理贩卖其她朝鲜女人的生意。

过了几年这样的生活，买她的人贩子生意破产，无力承担她们的生活，最后给了她们自由。

这为她能够逃亡的前提条件。

逃亡的第一步到 Qingdao（青岛）

协助脱北者离开朝鲜的组织大多为基督教会、人权活动家及专门做偷渡生意的人蛇组织。韩国作为基督教大国，常有教会和传教士协助脱北者离开朝鲜。

I thought life would continue like this forever until my mother met a North Korean woman named Hae Soon, who was living with a South Koreanman in Shenyang.

Before we met Hae Soon, my mother and I had never considered escape to South Korea a possibility.

But Hae Soon knew all about it and told us that the South Koreans would welcome us as citizens and helpus find jobs and a place to live.

She also knew how dangerous it was to try to escape from China.

If you were captured and returned to North Korea, then your life would be over.

Looking for work in China was a crime, but escaping to South Korea was high treason, and you would either be sent to apolitical prison camp, from which there is no escape, or maybe just executed.

Hae Soon told us that she knew a way out of China that had worked for others.

There were Christian missionaries in the city of Qingdao who could get you through China to Mongolia, 

which was supposed to welcome North Korean refugees.

Once you got to Mongolia, the South Korean embassy would take care of you.

Hae Soon wanted to go to Qingdao and start the journey, but she didn’t have the courage to do it alone.

 So she asked my mother and me to go with her.

逃亡的第二部到Mongolia（蒙古国）

宁死也不愿意被逮捕遣送回朝鲜。

Our group was planning to cross the border into Mongolia at night, on foot, during one of the coldest times of the year, when temperatures in that part of the Gobi Desert can drop to minus-27 degrees Fahrenheit.

Winter crossings were supposed to be safer because the Chinese border patrols were lighter and they wouldn’t be expecting anyone to risk freezing to death during such a dangerous trek.

But there was still a real possibility that we would be arrested before we got to the border.

And in that case, my mother and I had decided we were not going to be taken.

My mother had stashed away a large cache of sleeping pills—the same kind my grandmother hadused to kill herself.

I hid a razor blade in the belt of my tweed jacket so that I could slit my own throat before they sent me back to North Korea.

因为害怕自己死在逃亡的路上，离开前给贩卖过自己，又帮助过自己的Hongwei打了最后一通电话。

The night before we left, I called Hongwei.

We had not seen each other in months, and I still had such complicated feelings for him.

But now that I was facing my death, I was more at peace with my past.

I had spent too much energy and time hating and being intolerant of the choices others had made.

Now, at age fifteen, I felt that there was not enough time left to express my love and gratitude to the people in my life.

I told Hongwei that I had prayed for my father to stop haunting him and to forgive him.

I prayed that I could forgive him, too.

I also wanted him to know I was escaping through Mongolia, because if I died in the desert, he would be the only one whoremembered me.

By the end of our conversation I was crying, and Hongwei’s voice was choked with emotion.

“Good-bye, Yeonmi-ya,” he said. “I wish only the best for you. 

Please stay alive.”