An Oil Worker's Blended Family: Seven Family Members Turn Their Lives Around

In 1978, drilling team captain Qin Tieshan loses his wife and raises three children on his own.

The factory tries to set him up, but every match falls through. One woman thinks he's too poor, another thinks he has too many children.

His senior apprentice, Sun Guilan, secretly loves him, but he pretends not to notice. His junior apprentice, Wang Xiuzhi, treats him well, but he doesn't dare accept her affection.

He's forty-five. He's done looking.

Then an excavation team gets trapped in a cave-in. He rushes in to save them, but can't save his friend Su Zhiguo.

Kneeling before the portrait at the funeral, he says, “Now that you're gone, I'll look after your wife and children.”

Su Jinping arrives with her two children and marries him. Seven people crowd into three shabby rooms, share one pot of food, and live on one man's wages.

People laugh at him for being a fool. “You can barely support your own three. Why raise two more?”

He says nothing. He saves the money he would have spent on cigarettes to pay the children's school fees, and goes hungry to save a dowry for his stepdaughter.

Later, he buys shares in the factory before they go public. The whole factory laughs, saying he's throwing his money away. He doesn't sell.

The day the stock is listed, its value rises fifteenfold.

The people who laughed at him back then come crying to his door. He doesn't open it.

“I didn't do it for the money,” he tells his wife. “I did it for this family.”

All seven of them stay together.