Reborn in 1970: My Crop Yields Shock the Nation

Reborn in 1972, I became a disgraced man living in a cowshed. My little sister was so hungry she picked grasshoppers out of her cornmeal porridge, while the head of the Revolutionary Committee forced me to sign a confession. Instead, I sowed the first handful of hybrid rice seeds in a barren, saline wasteland. The whole village laughed at me. “Has this bookworm gone mad? How can crops grow in salty soil?” Then the heavy rice ears bent the field ridges, and one government jeep after another drove into the village. Director Zhao clutched an official document, trembling like a leaf. “C-Comrade Xu Qingshan... Your rice seeds, yielding eight hundred jin per mu, have caught Beijing’s attention!” At that moment, I was looking at the bloodstained notebook my mother had left behind. On the last page, it said: “The one who killed me was Zhao Yongge. The real culprit is...” In this life, I’ll make sure my family has white rice to eat. And I’ll make the murderers hiding in the shadows kneel before my mother’s grave.