Lin Wei is a talented but frustrated 32-year-old fashion designer. One night, she wakes up in 1981, in the body of an 18-year-old textile-mill worker whom everyone bullies.
Her adoptive mother pressures her to marry for a bride-price. Older workers ostracize her on the factory floor, and people in the technical department keep sabotaging her. Everyone is waiting to see her make a fool of herself, but they don't know that this young woman's body holds an eye for design and business acumen forty years ahead of its time.
In her hands, two-year-old surplus yarn becomes a hot-selling, two-tone fabric. She turns two scrapped looms into money-printing machines. At a trial sale outside the canteen, a hundred ready-made outfits sell out in forty minutes.
From loom operator to technical director, from unsold stock to production driven by demand, she carves out a path through the wave of reform at a state-owned factory.
And what about Gu Huaizhi, the streetwise peddler who hawks goods from lane to lane?
At first, he says, "You design, I'll handle sales, and we'll split the profits thirty-seventy."
Later, he says, "Lin Wei, I've seen you grit your teeth and keep quiet. I think I'm falling for you."
This is a story of a comeback, and of a romance between equals.
When Lin Wei's name appears in the newspaper for the first time, when her brand leaves the factory and goes nationwide, when she brings Eastern aesthetics to the international runway,
the whole world will know that this woman who rose from a textile mill holds in her hands not a needle and thread, but an entire era.
[Reading Guide]
1. The female lead is all business: she works hard to make money and build her career, and dishes out face-slapping and comeuppance without holding back.
2. The male lead is a devoted, ruthless businessman, a street peddler early on and a domineering CEO later. They're both formidable and dote on each other. The romance is a slow burn, but sweet.
3. Authentic period details and nonstop satisfying moments. Watch the female lead reshape an entire era!
