Year After Year, May You Find Peace

In her previous life, Zhu Qing'an had the hardest lot in all of Suzhou.

Her parents and older brothers were killed one after another, her elder sister married young, and the family fell into decline. Her clan forced her to marry a lazy gambler, turning her from a pampered young lady into a drudge of a wife.

In thirteen years, she gave birth to eleven children. Her husband gambled, and when they were poor, he used their children to pay off his debts. One after another, the children fell ill and died, leaving only one son and two daughters.

After a lifetime of toil and illness, in the end she depended on her youngest daughter and son-in-law to care for her until she died.

She died with regrets, then opened her eyes to find herself back in swaddling clothes, newly born.

Carrying the blood-and-tears memories of her previous life, from the moment she entered the world, she was determined to defy fate. She would protect her parents, avoid the calamities that had once killed them, and preserve the Zhu family's century-old legacy. She would refuse footbinding, fight feudal customs, pursue an education, and shatter the foolish notion that a woman without talent is virtuous.

She cut ties early with the scoundrel who had ruined her previous life, then watched him reap what he had sown and end up destitute.

As the Zhu family's youngest daughter, she was cherished by her parents, protected by her fiercely loyal brothers, and treated with tenderness by her elder sister. Her whole family treasured her and helped her leave Suzhou and earn a place at Peking University.

In the ancient capital of Beiping, she was reunited with Jiang Runian, the young man from a family of traditional Chinese medicine practitioners whom she had protected as a child.

He was six-foot-three, handsome and refined, with unmatched integrity. He wasn’t blindly obedient to his parents or hidebound by convention, and he respected women throughout his life. She was the only one in his heart. As a child, she had given him a safe haven; in this life, he promised her a love that would last forever.

In her previous life, she had no control over her fate. This time, she would write it herself.

Her family safe and well, her beloved by her side, and her talents her own foundation, she would bring every villain to justice.

Reborn in Suzhou, she would write her own destiny!

[Author's note: No household scheming, no women fighting each other, and no evil female rivals. Just a feel-good story about a cherished daughter and an ensemble cast.]