[1980s + reborn and severing family ties + sisters-in-law building a business + ensemble of women + slow-burn romance]
On the day of her wedding, Lin Wanqiu learned that her biological parents had accepted an 8,000-yuan bride price to marry her off to an old widower who had beaten his previous wife to death.
In her previous life, she gave her job to her younger brother, handed her wages over to her parents, and endured her husband's beatings. In the end, her biological parents demanded that she take the blame for her brother.
When she opened her eyes again, the suona was already playing at her front door.
In front of the whole village, Lin Wanqiu tore up the marriage contract and threw her red bridal veil into the brazier.
“Whoever took the money can marry him!”
She left the Lin family with her widowed sister-in-law, who had been bullied by her husband's family, and her five-year-old niece. All they had were twenty-seven yuan, a battered iron pot, and half a sack of sweet potatoes.
Everyone expected them to starve on the streets.
But starting with a pot of unwanted pig offal, she set up a stall, opened a shop, and built a factory. She turned a group of women abandoned by their husbands and rejected by their birth families into the county's first female workers and ten-thousand-yuan households.
Later, the parents who had called her a burden knelt outside her factory, begging her to come home.
Lin Wanqiu only looked at them coldly.
In this life, she wanted money, a career, and dignity. She also wanted to love someone worthy of her, openly and without shame.
The most attractive thing about this book is the strong atmosphere of life in the 1980s. An old pot, a small shop, handwritten account books and neighbors are both warm and calculating. After the heroine Lin Wanqiu broke off her marriage, she did not rely on golden fingers to reach the sky in one step. Instead, she and her widowed sister-in-law started by setting up a stall, and relied on their craftsmanship, credit and a little accumulated contacts to slowly live their lives. The book is not only about making money and getting slapped in the face, but also about family relationships, neighborhood interactions and the pyrotechnics of life that were unique to that era. It is very real and heart-warming to see two women supporting each other in difficult days and earning a career, dignity and a home of their own.
Delicate emotional description, vivid characters, good book The description is particularly delicate, and the bad guys are especially vivid.