The Lucky Girl Goes to the Countryside in 1970, and the Whole Village Feasts

[Period Setting + Lucky Child + Sent to the Countryside + Prosperity for the Whole Village + Everyone's Darling]

In 1970, four-year-old Qiao Niannian followed her parents, who had been sent down to the countryside, to the Xiangyang Brigade in the northwestern Gobi Desert.

The villagers each had less than three hundred jin of grain rations. Seeing the family of three, the brigade leader shook his head. "That's three more mouths to feed for nothing."

But no one could have guessed that wherever the little girl with her hair in pigtails went, good fortune followed.

She crouched beside a saline-alkali field and said, "There's something sweet underground." The next day, a gale exposed a layer of black soil, and the harvest tripled that year.

She played with stones she found in an abandoned kiln cave. Geologists identified them as an astonishingly rich kaolin deposit.

The wild grass she picked to feed the rabbits turned out to be a precious medicinal herb worth ten yuan a jin.

From being shunned by everyone to having the whole village competing to bring her vegetables and eggs, Niannian was carried on the brigade leader's shoulders wherever he went.

But success draws envy. Someone in the commune coveted the Xiangyang Brigade's good fortune and wanted to drive the Qiao family away.

People in the county had their eyes on the mineral resources too, reaching for them in secret.

The men and women of all ages from the Xiangyang Brigade blocked the village entrance. "Niannian is our whole village's treasure. Anyone who dares lay a finger on her will have to answer to all of us!"

How far could a four-year-old lucky girl take her whole village?

When the entire northwestern Gobi began to change because of one little girl, some people started to get nervous...