Transmigrated to the 1960s to Live Next Door to Grandma

[Historical Era] [Transmigration] [Pocket Dimension] [Building Wealth] [Female Growth] [Two Strong Leads] [Doctor] [Male Lead Appears Late] [Family Bonds] [Everyday Life] [Striving]

I transmigrated and became the neighbor of my grandmother when she was eighteen.

She had just left the army, had no education, and had no one to support her. Under my influence, she began studying medicine bit by bit, stubborn as a madwoman.

I knew she would become a renowned psychiatrist, establish a hospital, and send all four of her children into the medical profession.

But she didn't yet know how many lives she would see slip away, how many nights she would spend crying as she bandaged her own wounds, or how many patients beyond saving she would have to see off with her own hands.

Nor did she know that the little girl who would one day call her "Grandma" was standing right beside her now, doing everything she could to protect her dream.

In my grandmother's youth, I watched her stitch a white coat together one seam at a time. I watched her meet and fall in love with my grandfather. I watched her make her way from the countryside to the county seat and then the provincial capital. I watched my mother, uncle, and aunt come into the world one after another, each inheriting her convictions in turn.

In her youth, I also lived through the early days of the People's Republic, when everything was waiting to be rebuilt; felt the chaos in medical care during the Cultural Revolution; and witnessed the development of the barefoot doctor system, followed by the quiet emergence of China's first private hospitals during the Reform and Opening Up.

She said, "Practicing medicine is hard, and being a good person is hard too. But if you trust me, I'll dare to give it a try."

Years later, after I returned to the present day, she was still talking about the neighbor who had endured those hardest years with her.

She just didn't know that person was me.