Reborn on the eve of the Little New Year in 1979, she finds the coal coupons are gone again and the stove is about to go out again. But this time, she won’t let the fire die.
In her previous life, Zhao Xiulan lived to be seventy-two, starting from a single jar of pickles and becoming the founder of the province’s largest pickling factory. But she spent her whole life being timid: she didn’t dare speak up when the stove went out, didn’t dare sell her pickles even after people had praised them for thirty years, and didn’t dare talk back when her neighbors made snide remarks.
Reborn in the winter of 1979, she finds the stove about to go out, the coal coupons gone, and Sister Liu downstairs making a joke of her family’s troubles.
This time, Zhao Xiulan doesn’t want to put up with it anymore.
Starting with a single jar of pickles, she sells them from her apartment block to the supply and marketing cooperative, then across the whole province. The very people who looked down on her in her previous life later line up to buy her pickles.
Step by step, she carves out a path that took her thirty years to walk in her previous life. This time, every step is taken to her own rhythm.
She repays vengeance with vengeance and kindness with kindness. She fills her days with flavor and lives with purpose.
