Siheyuan: My Inheritance Won't Support Ungrateful Wolves

Beijing, 1965. In Willow Lane, Lin Ye’s parents die unexpectedly, leaving behind a wooden chest containing ration coupons, a Technical Notebook from the Agricultural Machinery Factory, and a Neighborhood Work Handbook. These are all he has.

But one ungrateful opportunist after another soon shows up. Old Lady Zhao blocks his door and tries to grab the ration coupons, claiming, “My grandson needs them to build up his strength.” Sun, a clerk at the machinery factory, alters Lin Ye’s machine-tool blueprints, hoping to get him fired. Uncle Wang from the courtyard eyes the land deed and pretends he has come to “look after it for him.”

Lin Ye refuses to let them get away with it. He looks up the relevant policies in his mother’s handbook and leaves Old Lady Zhao speechless. Using his father’s technical notes, he exposes Sun’s tricks on the spot, earning a string of curses from the factory director. Then he spots something suspicious about the date on the land deed and follows the clues to uncover the truth about his parents’ deaths.

To make life better, he trades ration coupons for meat and stores coal. He and Shen Qing hide a copy of How the Steel Was Tempered in the coal shed to pass messages to each other. At a neighborhood mediation meeting, he even produces the accounts proving Uncle Wang misappropriated the community fund and demands justice.

In 1977, the college entrance exams are reinstated. Lin Ye digs out his parents’ old textbooks, while Shen Qing brings him study materials wrapped in a Little Red Book cover. Suddenly he understands: his parents left him more than supplies. They gave him the strength not to be crushed and the hope of turning his life around through knowledge.

Later, when someone asks what the most precious thing in the courtyard is, Lin Ye points to his well-worn notebooks and touches the fountain pen Shen Qing gave him. “It’s my parents’ hard work, the backbone to refuse to raise a bunch of ungrateful opportunists, and the people who stayed by my side and helped me hold on to all of it.”