When she woke up, textile factory model worker Xu Qiusui's iron rice bowl was shattered. She had held the status of a "state-owned enterprise worker" for half her life and became a "laid-off female worker" overnight. Her husband's factory was also crumbling, and she had a son at home who was waiting to go to college. Neighbors pointed behind her, former colleagues sighed, and even her mother-in-law, who loved her the most, advised her: "If that doesn't work, just go to the market and sell vegetables. It's a job after all." Xu Qiusui wiped away her tears and stepped on the old-fashioned sewing machine she had brought with her as a bride. Selling vegetables? She doesn't. From mending clothes for neighbors, to secretly imitating the Hong Kong-style bell-bottoms in illustrated magazines; from riding the 28 pole to the fabric market to grab processed products, to setting up a stall in the night market and hanging a signboard of "Qiu Sui Fashion". People around her laughed at her whimsical thinking and waited to see her laugh. "Why bother when you've already been laid off?" "Self-employed? Aren't you just speculating?" But it didn't take long for those fashionable "Chenliang" shirts, one-step skirts, and denim jackets, born from a small sewing machine, to become popular throughout the city. The co-workers who laughed at her at first came to her door one after another and begged her to take them with them. Xu Qiusui looked at the garment factory he had built by himself. The busy figures of the workers and the roar of the machines were the most beautiful symphony of that era. Not only does she want to get her own job back, but she also wants to create another golden rice bowl for her sisters! ** Tags: ** Chronicles, career, laid-off and re-employed, group portraits
