Forged: From the Northern Wilderness to a Golden Wedding

A new story is here! Welcome to read my work on Tomato Novel. In the spring of 1972, Yu Wanting, the daughter of a Shanghai capitalist family, is swept up in the tide of the times and sent north on a special train carrying educated youth. She bids a tearful farewell to her family. In the same carriage bound for an unknown future, Qin Jianjun, a third-generation military man from a thoroughly revolutionary family, watches with cold eyes as the "pampered young lady" struggles to fit in. An argument over where to put their luggage sparks their initial hostility. But when Wanting faints from low blood sugar, the military chocolate Qin Jianjun offers becomes an unexpected salvation. The English novel they discover also quietly bridges the gap between two young people from different worlds.

The train heads for the Great Northern Wilderness, and the wheels of fate begin to turn. Amid the hardships of life in the production corps, the delicate Wanting repeatedly struggles with farm work, while the hard-edged Qin Jianjun carries her on his back through a stormy night after she is injured while rescuing grain. On the flood-control front line, he escapes danger thanks to the supplies she risks her life to deliver. Later, she becomes the subject of gossip for caring for him when he is wounded. Qin Jianjun, cold on the outside, steps forward to defend her at a crucial moment, while Wanting discovers an unknown tenderness hidden in his medal box. Bai Xiaomei's jealousy and scheming shadow Wanting at every turn, repeatedly pushing her into the eye of the storm.

When Qin Jianjun receives a telegram saying his grandfather is critically ill and faces pressure to marry someone with a "revolutionary family background"; when Wanting learns that her father will be sent down to an even more remote place and she urgently needs a chance to return to the city, two souls swept along by the times and trapped in their own predicaments make a shocking decision with no other way out