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But since the owners were usually out on business, Shen spent most of her time alone with their beloved pet - a boa constrictor.

She left after three days. But the boa slithered through her dreams for months.

Shen returned to a temporary shelter offered by other migrants from the area she grew up.

"I couldn't have hated myself more," she recalls. "I thought that I must be the stupidest person in the world."

She compared herself to her younger sister, who's much more literate and can ride a bicycle, so she can commute among different houses to clean on an hourly basis.

"I asked myself: 'What can I do?'" she says. "The answer was obvious. But I hated it."

Shen was the oldest child of a clan living within a square kilometer. Consequently, she has been taking care of children for as long as she can remember. The mother had also raised her own two children on her own since age 22.

"Caring for children was the last thing I wanted to do," she says.

"I thought I'd done it enough."

The first child under her care was her first younger sister, who died at age 2.

"She slipped into a ditch and was washed away and drowned," Shen recalls.

Shen was 4 and couldn't do anything but call for help and sob.

Her mother gave birth to another sister a year later. Shen essentially raised the girl.

Many of her nieces and nephews later also grew up under Shen's watchful eye.

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