In the meantime, she also got married and had two children, but she still made time for learning, indulging her love of studying by reading the few books she had kept.

"I wore them out by flipping through them every night," she says.

She also wrote poems from time to time and shared them with her coworkers.

"I got a bit excited when everybody started to consider me as artistic," Huang recalls.

However, her life was thrown off-track when her husband died.

Huang was then burdened with supporting her whole family.

"The closest thing I had to my dream of going to college was reading whenever I could," she says.

By the time her elder son graduated from vocational school and her younger son was about to reach school age, Huang decided to bring the latter to Changsha for a better education.

"I figured being closer to home will be better for him to grow up and learn," she says.

In 2014, Huang became a sanitation worker in the city to support her family while staying close to her younger son.

That was also when she started to go to the neighborhood libraries whenever she had free time to read and learn.

In fact, after her first day of working at her new job, she went to a local library to get a membership card.

"The card has kept me company for eight years and seen me borrow more than 100 books a year," Huang says.

"Books are my best friend, and reading them makes me forget about my fatigue," Huang says.