The moment Lin Haisheng opened his eyes, he was back in the twelfth lunar month of 1980.
In his previous life, he had been the village’s most despised wastrel. He drained his elder brother and sister-in-law’s hard-earned savings, forced his second elder sister into a marriage that was little better than a sale, drove his fourth younger sister to quit school and enter the sex trade, and ultimately left his family scattered, with some dead and others gone.
In this life, he had just been driven out of a city factory and sent back to Xiaohai Village when the Zhao family showed up, demanding a boat to settle a debt of 120 jin of brown rice.
Lin Haisheng tore up the worthless ledger and declared on the spot, “By noon tomorrow, I’ll slap every last one of those thirty yuan in your face!”
Snow sealed the doors, the family was out of food, his father had a lame leg, his mother always took her children’s side, his sister-in-law didn’t trust him, and his younger sister gritted her teeth and went out to sea with him.
So what if the household hadn’t been divided up?
If he couldn’t take a big boat out, he’d brave the reefs and gather seafood. If he couldn’t openly trade goods, he’d sort them by grade, keep them alive, and find buyers. He’d catch sea cucumbers and eels in the sea, and snare rabbits and pheasants in the mountains.
Starting with a broken wooden sailboat, Lin Haisheng would make sure his whole family had meat to eat. He’d also trample every bastard who had ever bullied the Lin family back into the mud, one by one.
