Just before graduating from the Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Shu Qinghe takes one wrong step and wakes up as a peasant girl on the verge of starving to death while fleeing famine in ancient times. From the start, she's in hell mode: her parents have starved to death, her younger siblings are still children, and the whole village is gaunt, clinging to life by chewing tree bark and eating clay.
Shu Qinghe: “...” Her expertise is relevant, but not quite relevant enough.
Luckily, deep in the mountains she digs up a basketful of things the villagers call “demon taro.” The village's most learned old scholar shakes his head solemnly. “It's poisonous. The old books say nothing about it. Under no circumstances should anyone eat it!” Mrs. Wang next door turns up her nose. “If you eat that stuff, your ancestors won't rest easy in their graves!”
Shu Qinghe clutches the basket of potatoes, eyes shining. “Everyone, take my word for it. These things yield three thousand jin per mu. Science and technology can change your destiny!”
The villagers: ? Has this girl gone mad with hunger and started talking nonsense?
When no one believes her, she takes her younger siblings and secretly plants them in the barren sandy land by the village entrance that nobody wants. With no fertilizer, she composts manure and burns plant matter to make ash. With no tools, she sharpens stones and uses sticks to dig.
While everyone waits to laugh at her, potatoes pile up in little hills as she digs them out of the ground. Then the first bite of soft, fluffy roasted potato and the first bowl of fragrant potato stew win over the whole village.
The villagers: “Delicious! Qinghe, take us with you! I want to plant these in my three mu of poor soil too!”
Later, Shu Qinghe not only leads the whole village in growing potatoes and sweet potatoes, but also develops new varieties, promotes cultivation, and builds a processing industry, turning her little seedling business into a venture that reaches across the land.
A certain haughty young county magistrate, who once scoffed at her “wild claims,” quietly blushes as he munches on the french fries in his hand:
