Siheyuan: A Bag of Roasted Chestnuts, and Qin Huairu Is Mine

Lu Changhe woke up one day and found himself transmigrated to the Forty-Nine City in the autumn of 1952.

At No. 37 Nanluoguxiang, he was a junior clerk in the Supply and Marketing Department of the Red Star Steel Plant. His parents had died young, leaving him with only two rooms in the west courtyard.

Most people who transmigrated had something to worry about. He had a gift box tucked in his pocket.

Whenever he gave something to a woman he took a liking to, the next day the gift box would produce twice as much in return.

Give away a bag of hot chestnuts, and half a roomful of mountain delicacies came back.

Give away a slab of meat, and a whole side of pork came back.

As it happened, the Jia family in his courtyard was arranging a match. The young woman they brought was Qin Huairu, just nineteen and so fresh-faced she looked as if you could squeeze water from her.

The Jia family even tried to fob her off with hot water, but Lu Changhe set up shop at the entrance to the alley and won her over with a bag of sugar-roasted chestnuts.

Sweet country girls, widowed factory-worker sisters, charming widows who ran little taverns, alluring silk-shop proprietresses, factory beauties, female teachers, female doctors, little phoenixes from the arts troupe, returned overseas Chinese women, and female Hong Kong merchants from the south...

His gift box was never empty.

He repaired courtyard walls, set up a canteen, got into transportation, and started businesses, working his way from the ration-ticket era to becoming a ten-thousand-yuan household.

This novel and its characters are entirely fictional. Any resemblance to real people or events is purely coincidental. Do not imitate.