On the First Day of Exile, the Three-Year-Old Little Treasure Woke the Barren Mountain with Her Voice

(Adorable kids + farming + exile and mountain foraging + space-based development + the whole family fights back + starting from the wilderness + feel-good ensemble cast + light political intrigue + food and business) Other people suffer through exile. Jiang Manbao takes her whole family mountain foraging, farming, building roads, opening a market, and constructing a city, turning the northern wasteland everyone despises into a golden paradise everyone wants to move to. Jiang Manbao is three and a half years old, the youngest little darling of the Jiang family in the capital. After a wrongful conviction, the Jiang family is stripped of its possessions and exiled three thousand li to the northern wilderness. Grandmother is sick, Mother is crying, Father has a broken leg, and her older brothers and sisters are starving until they see stars. The escort officer sneers, “You’ll be lucky if you survive the winter in the northern wilderness.” Manbao hugs her little broken bowl and says in a childish voice, “Don’t worry. The mountains say they have food.” Everyone thinks she’s delirious from hunger. Until she digs up wild yams beneath a dead tree, finds a frozen pheasant in a snowdrift, discovers a hot spring in a rocky ravine, and finds a mountain deed-space behind the barren hills where anything can grow. From then on, the Jiang family’s exile takes a different turn. While everyone else chews tree bark, the Jiang family drinks chicken and mushroom soup. While everyone else hides from bandits, Manbao puts the bandits to work building roads. While everyone else complains that the northern wilderness is poor, Manbao leads the whole village to clear farmland, build greenhouses, dig irrigation canals, hold a mountain goods fair, build a school, establish a clinic, and construct a post station. Years later, the court finally clears the family’s name and sends people to bring the Jiangs back to the capital. Manbao sits on the city wall, eating a sweet melon, and blinks. “Why go back to the capital? I haven’t finished planting all my mountains yet.”