Reborn in the 1990s: Building a Business with a Baby on My Back and Molding My Husband

In 1998, twenty-year-old Ran Qingshu presses her barely one-year-old son back into her mother-in-law’s arms, then boards a bus south to Shenzhen with red-rimmed eyes. Her husband, Lu Hanxiao, squeezes her hand. “As soon as we’ve made some money, the first thing we’ll do is bring our boy here.”

They work night and day on the assembly line. She counts the hours, while he collects recipes. Six months later, Ran Qingshu points to a cart selling fried noodles by the factory gates. “Let’s set up a stall too. You cook, and I’ll call out to customers.”

From a sheet of plastic on the ground to boxed rice with braised meat that has people lining up across the industrial district, from a tin shack to renting their first shop. At last, she brings her son to Shenzhen and points to the new home they’ve bought in a good school district. “Xingxing, this is where you’ll go to school from now on.” The child timidly calls her...

“Auntie.”

At that moment, Ran Qingshu vows that she won’t just keep her son in Shenzhen. She’ll make sure the whole village knows that a parent’s love is the brightest light on the starting line of a child’s life.