Confessions of a cell phone addict

Editor's note: Ye Xiaowen, 26, works in the human resource department of NEC Corp in Tianjin. She is a self-described cell phone addict.

I got my first cell phone in middle school, when I was at a boarding school in Tianjin. It was the first time I had lived apart from my family and my father bought me the bricklike device so I could chat with him for a little bit every day. Later that year, I got a better phone and passed my first one on to my mother.

That was some 12 years ago.