[Period] Zhang Yingying spent forty years being a pushover everyone could take a swipe at. Her parents worked her like a beast of burden, her mentally disabled older sister depended on her, her older brother expected her to chip in for a house, and she had to support her younger sister’s glamorous life. Her husband cheated and took everything, while her son resented her slavish obedience to her parents so much that he refused to come home. She died in a shabby old apartment with a leaky roof, without even a cup of hot water beside her bed. When she opened her eyes again, she was eighteen, in the summer, with the heat of the plastics factory workshop blowing against her face. On the table lay the matchmaking photo she’d regretted for the rest of her life. This time, she tore it to pieces right in front of her mother. The smell of plastic in the 1980s was choking, but she could smell freedom in it. She would stand tall at the injection molding machine, weld her miserable first half of life shut for good, and piece her own life back together, one little bit at a time.
In the 1980s, there were many opportunities, but few could be grasped. The writing was quite good.