Lin Wanqing, the head maid of the Prime Minister’s household, is literate, skilled at embroidery, and knows a little medicine. After accidentally falling into a cellar, she transmigrates into the newlywed wife of Gu Changfeng, an army officer stationed on an island in the 1970s. Her carved bed is replaced by an iron-frame one, her silks by coarse cotton, and she stares blankly at the red double-happiness character on the wall.
In the island’s apartment blocks, she trades embroidery for ration coupons and mends her neighbors’ clothes. She even uses her rudimentary medical skills to ease their minor aches, gradually shedding her maid’s reserve. The taciturn officer brings her water when she chokes while learning to use a honeycomb briquette stove, and quietly turns up the kerosene lamp when she reads the newspaper late at night. Their initial distance gives way to a slight tremor when their fingers touch as she mends his uniform, then to a tender moment when he braves the rain to find her a medical book. The warmth hidden beneath their coarse clothes is more comforting than the finest brocade in the Prime Minister’s household. Two people from different eras fall for each other in the sea breeze, and their unexpected marriage blossoms into something extraordinary.
