Pictures of the Year International

Xin Zeng is at his own house. Baoding City, Hebei Province, China. Sep. 22, 2024 67-year-old Xin Zeng is from Baoding, Hebei. In the 1980s, there was a phenomenon of trafficking women in China, where human traffickers lured rural women from remote areas in the south to the north under the guise of recruiting workers, and then sold them to single men who could not find wives due to poverty. Xin Zeng spent four thousand yuan to buy a southern wife at that time. Later, his wife's younger brother rescued her while Xin Zeng was out. Then Xin Zeng went to work in Shanxi Province and accidentally fell off a truck, causing his head to sink and his left arm to lose its ability to work. Now he has returned to his hometown in Hebei and applied for national poverty allowance, with only $100 per month for living. Although he has limited mobility, he doesn't want to compromise himself. He cooks for himself and refuses to hang out with the single men next door. He says everyone has different tastes and can't eat together.