Transmigrating to the 1980s, My Soldier Boy Spoils Me into a Millionaire

In the twelfth year of the Wanli era, Shen Zhiyan, the eldest legitimate son of the Shen family, silk merchants in Suzhou, uses his extraordinary business acumen to build the family business into one of the finest in Jiangnan. Though he commands a fortune worth millions, he is trapped at the very bottom of the despised merchant class in a society that ranks people as scholars, farmers, artisans, and merchants. His shop is seized by the prefect’s brother-in-law. His father begs for help to no avail, then coughs up blood and takes to his bed. Shen Zhiyan spends a fortune seeking an audience with officials, yet cannot even get through the yamen’s front gate. He finally sees the truth: in the Ming dynasty, no matter how rich a merchant gets, he is still meat on the chopping block for the powerful.

Desperate to escape his lowly status, he takes a camphorwood chest filled with gold ingots and rare antiques to Nanjing to buy an official post. But a violent storm overturns his boat on the Grand Canal. Clutching the chest, he sinks beneath the water. When he opens his eyes again, he has landed in Bao’an, Guangdong, in the 1980s.

His terror at nearly dying soon gives way to pure elation: here, there are no shackles of low status, merchants don’t have to kneel to survive, and the state openly encourages people to make money! With business instincts etched into his very bones, he seizes every opportunity of the times with uncanny precision. From his first pot of gold to establishing himself in industry, from expansion into the stock market to diversifying his investments, he weathers crisis after crisis. By the dawn of the year 2000, the “lowly merchant” from the Ming dynasty has become a private-sector tycoon worth tens of billions, living a life the people of his time could never have dreamed of.