Reborn in the 1970s: The Educated Youths Turn Famine Years Into Years of Plenty

In the autumn of 1974, Lin Suihe was cornered in the educated youth station’s grain store and accused of stealing grain.

But what she clutched protectively to her chest wasn’t grain. It was a packet of sweet potato seeds.

In her previous life, she had starved to death in the winter after being sent to the countryside.

When she opened her eyes again, she had returned to the first day of her rural assignment.

She knew which granary would grow mold, which batch of sweet potatoes would rot from the inside, which fields would fail to yield a crop, and which canal would collapse in a rainstorm.

This time, she wouldn’t starve to death again.

First, she would make sure the educated youth station had enough food. Then she would cultivate the fields of Qinghe Brigade.

She would make sure the children had food to eat, the elderly didn’t have to count out every grain of rice in winter, and this desperately poor land produced more food with every passing year.

Many people would later say that Qinghe Brigade’s turnaround began the day a young woman arrived in the village, clutching a packet of sweet potato seeds, her eyes as fierce as a starving wolf’s.

And standing by her side was the man who had been sent down to Qinghe, a taciturn man who worked tirelessly, one stroke at a time, to bring water to her fields.

She grew crops; he built canals.

Together, they turned years of famine into years of plenty.

Reborn | Sent-down educated youth | Farming | Infrastructure building | Period drama | Ensemble cast | Intellectual couple | A woman’s growth