After Flipping the Table at a Blind Date, I Marry a Rough-Hewn Rebel at First Sight

"Men shouldn't marry Shang Jianwei from West Street, and women shouldn't marry Xie Chongshan from East Street."

The former is a pampered, sharp-tongued "difficult older woman" whom no one dares marry.

The latter is a slacker, an unambitious "college student who has given up on life."

Matchmakers fear divine retribution and never dare set the two of them up.

Until the matchmaking showdown at the state-run restaurant:

A top-grade man lays out thirty rules for her to serve him like an ox or a horse. Shang Jianwei sneers and flips the table. "The Qing dynasty is long gone. Why is your mother still making rules here?"

A gold-digging woman demands five hundred yuan in bride price to support her younger brother. Xie Chongshan tears her apart with his sharp tongue. "Marrying you is the same as marrying your whole family so they can freeload off me?"

They exchange a glance from across the room, and two rebels immediately hit it off.

"What a coincidence. No one dares marry me either."

"Let's get our marriage certificate and shut the door on the world. We'll live our own lives."

The whole neighborhood drags out stools to wait for these two "stubborn holdouts" to turn their life together into a joke.

But the longer they wait, the stranger things get:

While everyone else is still fighting over ration coupons, Shang Jianwei is using pearl cream reserved for foreign guests and becomes a foreign-affairs expert, promoted beyond her rank by the Port Authority.

While everyone else is still pedaling themselves ragged on bicycles, Xie Chongshan drives a Santana into the courtyard and becomes a major industrialist with a monopoly over the industry!

One late night, they stumble across each other's secret identities.

Shang Jianwei looks at the two boxes of gold bars under the bed. "I thought you said you were unemployed."

Xie Chongshan holds her foreign-exchange passbook and hit manuscripts, smiling low. "Great Author Shang, time to settle accounts tonight."