The Lazier You Are, the More Fortune You Have: This Nineties Couple Quietly Gets Rich

"She didn't even bring a color TV when she married into the family. I was cursed with the worst luck when I took this second daughter-in-law!"

Everyone on Cotton Mill Road knows Zhou Niantang married a demobilized soldier who's "a good-for-nothing who'll never amount to anything."

Her mother-in-law calls her lazy to anyone who'll listen. Her sister-in-law sneers at her for being poor. Even her own brother and sister-in-law show up to mooch, demanding her resettlement allowance!

The whole alley is watching the clock, waiting to laugh as the young couple starve and end up in a miserable divorce!

But no one knows that, while Zhou Niantang looks like an idle little office clerk, she secretly writes for top fashion magazines, earning in a single payment several months' worth of an ordinary worker's salary!

By day, her husband He Lingchuan is a taciturn screw-tightener. At night, he hand-builds color TVs and radios, using his serious skills to make old goods worth eight times as much!

While her brother-in-law is still bragging about the tape recorder he bought for 160 yuan, their bankbook has quietly crossed into four figures!

Five sacks of electronic components arrive from the south overnight, and the couple's assembly business becomes a hit across the entire province!

When the wave of layoffs hits and demolition notices cover the alley walls, everyone who once laughed at them panics!

Faced with their shameless relatives lining up at the door to borrow money, Zhou Niantang smiles as she shuts the iron gate:

"Borrow money? Sorry, we're too poor. We still have to keep saving!"