Transmigrating to the Eighties: The Foreign Exchange-Earning System Takes Me Along

The protagonist, Lin Chen, accidentally transmigrates from 2024 to a small town in southern China in 1982, becoming an unemployed young man. Facing poverty at home and his parents’ worried faces, he awakens the “Era Foreign Exchange System.” Its core mission is to help the country increase its foreign exchange reserves. Completing tasks earns him various scarce goods, such as imported electronic components, foreign trade quotas, and blueprints for lost crafts; skill points in foreign languages, business, and machinery repair; and special items like a freshness-preserving space and a precision weather forecaster.

Lin Chen starts with his first small task: “Sell 50 jin of dried bamboo shoots, a local specialty, to the foreign trade office.” He gradually learns the business rules of the 1980s and meets his first heroine, Su Xiaoya, a kind and attentive switchboard operator at the foreign trade office who helps Lin Chen open up foreign trade channels. Along the way, he settles neighborhood disputes and handles early crises like inspections by the industry and commerce authorities, earning his first pot of gold and improving his family’s life as he lays the groundwork for what comes next.