Zheng didn't show any particular interest in poetry while growing up. In her hometown, while working as a medical assistant in a country clinic, she constantly felt oppressed by the job.
The pride of the family after being accepted into medical school, Zheng obsessed about how much her parents owed for her tutelage. "All I could think of was how to pay them back," she says.
Despite her family's objections, Zheng left the clinic and moved to Dongguan, a manufacturing center of Guangdong, in 2000. Her first few months were filled with hideous experiences.
Finding a good job seemed impossible and it was common for hundreds of people to apply for two or three positions. Applicants were asked to run and do sit-ups to prove their physical strength, she says.
Zheng moved from one job to another. Once in a factory making furniture, she worked 12 hours a day, without any holidays. She was paid 284 yuan ($40) at the end of the first month. "I was desperate at that time," she says. "It felt like all my ideals (for the future) vanished in one instant."
She was often penniless and regularly went hungry.
Zheng finally settled down four years ago at a factory making metal tools. There, the cutting machine took off one of her fingernails. She was lucky though, as some lost their fingers.
She wrote her first poem while recovering. "I was in the hospital. From time to time, I could hear other patients' groans, who lost their fingers on the assembly lines. I kept asking myself, what if it was you crying over such pains, and which part of my body would be hurt next time? I listened to my heart and wrote down what I thought about these assumptions. I felt a power gradually awaken inside me by the aching wound," she says.
Zheng submitted the poem to a local paper and was later published. She then began to devote all of her spare time to writing and reading. In 2004, her poems, such as Struggles and Footbridge, which depict the hardships of migrant workers, sparked debate on the Internet and helped garner attention for the so-called "migrant-worker poets".
With the support of local government, Zheng then published two collections of her poetry. She was invited to several symposiums to deliver speeches and later won the People's Literature Prize.
However, despite this mainstream recognition, Zheng's poetry has drawn sharp criticism for its coarse language, naive devices and disorderly arrangement. Some point out that her writing simply echoes the anger and disappointment of rural itinerants.
