Siheyuan: Idle Skill Grinding, Feeding the Whole Family Through Famine

A modern office drone transmigrates to the famine year of 1962, becoming a twelve-year-old boy from the Zhang family in a Beijing courtyard. His father lies unconscious with serious injuries, the family has run out of food, and his mother, Ma Zhenzhen, and two older sisters survive day after day on thin soup. He awakens a golden finger that lets him grind skills while idling: box folding, fishing, medicine, you name it! He hauls in huge fish through holes in the ice with an empty hook, trading them for money and food; gets the miserly Third Uncle under control; plots to take a factory job and secure ration coupons; protects all his loved ones; and crushes the neighbors, each with their own schemes. In the famine years, he turns his life around and lives in comfort!

This novel and its characters are entirely fictional. Any resemblance is purely coincidental. Do not imitate.