At the Youth Office, Forced to Give Up My Position from the Start

[Period drama + educated youth sent to the countryside + family planning + family conflicts + officialdom]

Chen Mo, a low-ranking civil servant who had spent his whole life in the 21st century, transmigrates and wakes up as a staff member at the 1975 Educated Youth Placement Office.

He got the job by taking over for his seriously ill mother.

But the family is already simmering with tension over it: his uncle's family sees his mother's position as a “family resource.”

His father, meanwhile, keeps pressuring him, hoping that as the eldest son, he'll give the job to his half-brother so the younger boy can stay in the city.

Faced with his family's schemes and coercion, he refuses to budge. If his younger brother doesn't have a job, then send him to the countryside.

That way, the younger brother won't have to worry about being unemployed anymore.

In this extraordinary era, Chen Weidong has no ability to foresee the future.

All he has is a hazy recollection of the tide of history and a conscience he refuses to let die.

Within the cracks of rigid policies, he finds room in the “special hardship” provisions for the daughters of “Black Categories,” points desperate young people toward a path that preserves their dignity, and brings a touch of humanity to cold forms.

Years later, those who came close to being crushed beneath the wheels of the era still say over dinner and drinks: “We owe our family's survival to that one stroke Chen made back then.”