A Mailbox to the Modern World: The Whole Internet Spoils a Three-Year-Old Cutie

In the final years of the Da Qian dynasty, a three-year drought in Longxi was followed by blizzards that sealed off the mountains.

For half a month, Huangwa Village had been without grain or salt. To save her grandmother, Madam Liu, who was gravely ill with a high fever, three-and-a-half-year-old Lu Tangtang, nicknamed Tangbao, tossed a red pebble and a dried wild pear into a red-painted metal mailbox that had appeared out of nowhere in a crevice on the back mountain.

Back in a modern shared apartment, illustrator Gu Wanqing returned from working overtime and casually sent back glucose and soft bread. Thus began an exchange of goods between two worlds:

Tangbao sent wild chrysanthemums, pinecone doodles, and a century-old mountain ginseng root, in exchange for life-saving salt and sugar, steaming meat porridge, a thick military coat, and a thousand jin of fine rice.

The old village chief, Lu Shoushan, laid down ironclad rules for killing anyone who threatened the child. All twenty-one villagers would protect her with their lives. A pet-raising post quietly gained popularity, and online moms and dads flocked in as soon as they heard about it. When the local bully Zhou Laizi spied on them and bandits descended on the village on a snowy night, the old soldier's cunning and modern high-tech weapons drove them back one by one.

The little crybaby was doted on until she became the plumpest little lucky star in a turbulent age.