Key tags: **Water Towns of Jiangnan | Beautiful and Soothing | Farming by the Solar Terms | Outsmarting Enemies | A Rough-and-Ready Craftsman | A Slow-Burning Romance
In her original life, the woman had jumped into a river for a scumbag. When Sang Luo arrived, she was choking on a mouthful of mud and sand.
Faced with her hypocritical ex, a young intellectual, and her green-tea fake best friend, who was gloating from the riverbank, she didn't cry, throw a fit, or threaten suicide. Instead, she grabbed a thorny lotus stem and whipped the scumbag hard across the face, then headed back to the rain-leaking little courtyard of gray brick that her grandfather had left her.
In the resource-scarce 1970s, while others fought tooth and nail for half a liang of grain coupons, Sang Luo kept her “Twenty-Four Solar Terms Journal” close and lived like she was in paradise in her water town.
In spring, she picked early-season tea still fresh with dew. In summer, she simmered a pot of translucent mung bean dessert with lotus leaves. In autumn, she made osmanthus flowers into sweet lotus root. In winter, she warmed old duck soup over a little red clay stove.
When grasping relatives tried to seize the old house, she used the village rules and rallied the right support, making them choke on their own schemes without lifting a finger.
As life grew better and better, Ji Linchuan, the village's quietest man and a rough-around-the-edges carpenter who was a master at machinery, held a large black umbrella over her one stormy night.
