A Minor Official in Republican-Era Changsha: Eighteen Twists on the Road to Office

【Alternate history + laugh-out-loud comedy + workplace life in Republican-era China + an ordinary man’s rise + hard-core execution + Changsha setting】 Open this book and see how “Master of Slacking Off” Xiang Huijia navigates the eighteen twists and turns of the officialdom amid the changing fortunes of a city! Xiang Huijia, a provincial government speechwriter who died from overwork, opened his eyes to find himself the lowest-ranking clerk in Changsha in the 1920s. Faced with a country on the brink of collapse and an absurd bureaucracy divided among rival factions, all he wanted was to stick to his survival philosophy: “Do more, make more mistakes. Do less, make fewer mistakes. Do nothing, make no mistakes,” and coast peacefully until the end of time. But fate seemed determined to punish anyone who refused to play along... One ridiculous KPI after another dropped from the sky, repeatedly thrusting him into the eye of the storm. Meanwhile, Mo Renmin, a sharp young reporter for the Dagong Daily who detested evil, took him as the perfect example of a “bureaucratic slimeball and parasite on the system.” She tore into him with her pen, eager to strip away his flippant facade. Yet she was astonished to discover that this wisecracking, seemingly slippery fellow could always use unheard-of tricks to carve a way out of hopeless situations and make the impossible possible. He used a “SWOT analysis” to settle disputes between departments, a “project flowchart” to sort out military supply allocations, and even his signature dish, Dong’an chicken, to win over the most difficult people. This is an absurd comedy about a modern office worker who brings his special skills in polishing PowerPoints, writing official documents, and passing the buck across departments to survive the “art of doing nothing” in Republican-era government, only to get swept up in the rat race and accidentally become a major player.