The story begins in 1960, when Lin Mo, an engineer from Hyundai Heavy Industries, accidentally traveled through time.
He became a 16-year-old orphan with both parents dead and no one to rely on in the courtyard house at No. 95 Nanluogu Lane, Beijing.
What he faces is not only material poverty - he only survives on eight yuan of relief money from the street office every month - but also a desperate human situation:
Yi Zhonghai, an elder who considers himself a "moral model", tries to use the patriarchal ethics of "respecting the elderly, loving the young, and helping neighbors" to kidnap him and make him a candidate for retirement;
The Jia Zhang family regarded him as someone who could suck blood at will, and his son Jia Dongxu excluded him everywhere in the factory.
His wife, Qin Huairu, tried to exchange his affectionate "sister-sister relationship" for his food rations and wages; the projectionist Xu Damao was even jealous of his several years of education and made things difficult for him, spreading rumors that he had "bad grades" and "ideological problems."
