Qin Shuang, a top survivor in a famine-ravaged apocalypse, opens her eyes and finds herself in a 1970s-era novel as the wicked younger sister-in-law who makes life hell for everyone and eventually dies a gruesome death.
Her older brother is a hopeless do-gooder. He would rather let his own sister go hungry enough to develop a stomach condition than refuse to lend his ration coupons to the seemingly frail widow next door.
Qin Shuang rubs her empty stomach and heads straight to the widow's house without a word, taking away the basin and all the steamed buns made with white flour.
No job, and about to be sent to the countryside by the neighborhood office?
She dives headfirst into the textile factory's canteen. With the exceptional seasoning skills she honed over ten years in the apocalypse, she cooks up a pot of communal stew that sends its aroma wafting for a hundred meters.
She rises from lowly fire-tender to the canteen's undisputed boss.
With a giant iron ladle in hand, anyone who crosses her gets three extra shakes of salt in their food!
But now that she's full, the original owner's chronic stomach chill still threatens her life.
She sets her sights on Lu Sinian, the factory doctor's office physician: a handsome foreign-trained doctor who is cool, chaste, and obsessively fastidious.
She brings him soup, meat, and warmth, backing Dr. Lu into a corner until he finally hands her his salary card and his whole self, his ears red with embarrassment.
When the survival rules of the apocalypse meet the security of a planned-economy job, who's the toughest person on the block?
