Chen Yang wakes up to find he has transmigrated into the story of a courtyard compound. He lands a job as a purchasing agent at the supply and marketing cooperative in a nearby alley, and leads his whole family toward a happy, comfortable life!
His father, Zheng Fuguo, is a temporary worker who cleans toilets at the steel mill, a despised “intellectual” whose job could disappear at any moment. Everyone in the compound treats him like a doormat.
His older brother, Zheng Guang, is an apprentice in the steel mill’s boiler room. The cafeteria workers, led by Silly Zhu, treat him like a fire poker, and he can barely hold his head up under all the coal dust.
His mother has been branded a “jinx” by Jia Zhangshi and the other sharp-tongued gossips because of her “class background.” Her family suffers everyone’s disdain, and she has to fetch water in the middle of the night. His little sister is as thin as a bean sprout. The neighborhood kids routinely steal her steamed buns and splash her with cold water, and she is too scared to even cry out loud.
With the help of his golden finger System, years later...
Silly Zhu: Now I’m the head of a cafeteria team at the steel mill.
Zheng Yang: Great. My brother is the mill director now!
Jia Zhangshi: At last, we’ll get to eat meat for the New Year.
Zheng Yang: Meat? My family is tired of eating seafood!
Qin Huairu: Our Xiaodang is the newest college student in the worker-peasant-soldier program.
Zheng Yang: Sorry, my little sister is a student at one of China’s top universities, and she’ll have a job as soon as she graduates! How can your family compare to mine?
The whole courtyard is collectively devastated!
