I Did Everything I Promised Them

#Urban #Transmigration #1980s #PromisesKept #InfrastructureAndFarming #FightingForThePeople

“When Song Mingyuan transmigrated to a poor county in 1980, the old county magistrate took his hand and said, ‘Xiao Song, I'm counting on you to take care of all 230,000 people in this county.’”

[100-word hook]:

He has the next forty years of policy developments in his head, but in this small northern county just beginning to embrace reform and opening up, none of it seems to work. The only thing he can rely on is a System called “Knowing and Doing.” It can predict the results of policies, but it can't spare him the consequences.

From getting the first village to sign a household-responsibility contract with 117 red-inked fingerprints, to building the county's first road for its farmers, to every agonizing choice between “sacrificing a few” and “protecting the greater good,” he discovers that his greatest golden finger was never the System. It was the people who, even after being battered by reality, still couldn't bring themselves to stop believing in him.

And when he has spent twenty years making good on most of his promises, a letter from the “past” makes him realize that his transmigration was never an accident. Before him, someone else had made the very same promise.