The Wildest Girl in the Factory Compound

[A Hard-Won Coming-of-Age Story + Mother and Daughter Relying on Each Other + Period Novel + Comeback + Strong Female Lead + Secret Crush]

In 1996, on the day the factory loudspeaker at a major northern industrial base finished reading out the list of workers whose contracts were being bought out, Chen Gangbeng's father took the bankbook and ran off with a hair salon girl.

Her mother stood in the snow at twenty degrees below zero and hurled the family's only radio out the window.

Glass shattered everywhere.

Eight-year-old Chen Gangbeng crouched down, picked up the sharpest shard, and slipped it into her padded jacket pocket.

Her uncle, there to collect a debt, blocked the doorway and cursed, “A useless money pit who can't even give birth to a son. Get out of the factory housing while you still can!”

Her mother grabbed her hand and didn't look back. “Gangbeng, remember: the two of us have to carry our own burdens.”

From then on, an abandoned boiler room was their home, and scavenging coal scraps was how they survived.

The neighbors said her mother was crazy. Her relatives said she had a hard life.

But Chen Gangbeng didn't believe in fate.

She peddled frozen pears in the snow, searched for copper wire at the scrapyard, and watched stalls at the market. The least valued little girl in the factory compound was determined to live like the toughest steel ball.

As for the boy from the military residential compound who always quietly helped her push her handcart through the snow...

“Stop following me around. I don't have any food in my pockets.”

The boy pulled his frostbitten red hands back into his military coat and muttered, “I don't want your food.”

“Then what do you want?”