In 2020, folk-tech blogger Shen Hongqi met a rather ridiculous end: he was electrocuted while modifying an old radio. When he opened his eyes, he had become a young worker with the same name at the Hongqi Machinery Factory in 1977.
He woke up straight into a factory-wide denunciation meeting. The original owner had ruined production by recklessly modifying a lathe and was about to be sent away to haul scrap iron. His family was so poor they could barely put food on the table. His father had a limp from a workplace injury, and his younger siblings stared hungrily at their cornmeal porridge. Even Qiu Yinhe, the teacher he had a crush on, frowned and called him "a man with no sense of priorities."
Others got ahead after being reborn by taking the college entrance exam or going into trade, but Shen Hongqi discovered that his tech tree had grown in a very strange direction:
He repaired a lathe urgently needed for a military contract using maltose and iron filings, stunning a crowd of veteran mechanics.
He turned a scrap-yard metal bucket into an energy-efficient coal stove, so his family no longer had to "cook with nothing but fresh air."
He even rigged up a simple "CNC" device from a bicycle chain and alarm-clock gears to improve workshop productivity.
Though he came from nowhere and only had a shaky grasp of theory, he could always find the most down-to-earth way to solve the toughest problems. While others were worrying about ration coupons, he'd already earned his first fortune through "unorthodox methods." When the college entrance exam became the only way forward, he started a "tech venture" with his fellow workers.
The quiet teacher Qiu Yinhe went from "disapproving of him" to volunteering as his "secretary and investor." Conservative department head Liu Dashan went from constantly making things difficult for him to getting thoroughly humiliated by his inventions. In an age of scarcity that was also full of opportunity, Shen Hongqi rode the rhythm of the times and used a pile of scrap parts to carve out an industrial success story no one else would have dared to imagine.
From the Start, I Drew a Billionfold Critical Hit
Starlight Substitute: The Top-Tier Star’s Secret Lover
The Collapse of the Primordial World: The Golden Cudgel Holds Up Earth’s Sky
Weaving Dreams Against Fate: The Infinite Abyss
Reborn in 1980: My Dream of a Technological Superpower
F-Rank Superpower? I Become a God Through the Death Feedback of Rats
If you haven't had that experience, just check the information carefully.