Happiness in the South

On the eighteenth day of the first lunar month in 1990, in Wujiawan, Guizhou, sixteen-year-old Wu Huanxi set out for work with a snakeskin bag on her back.

In her previous life, she was betrayed by her sisters, sold by human traffickers, tricked into a pyramid scheme, forced to sleep under bridges and pick through garbage, yelled at by her boss, and groped by customers. In the end, she worked herself to death in a rented room, with no one to claim her body.

When she opened her eyes, she was back on the morning she had left.

This time, when Wang Xiaohua smiled with a knife hidden behind it, she talked back to her on the spot. When Ermazi came over to drum up customers, she stomped on his foot. When her boss complained that she was too slow, she turned on her heel and walked out.

From toy factories to garment factories, from street stalls to owning three factories, she carved a path through Shenzhen. The people who once looked down on her lined up to beg her for a living.

Wang Chenyu, who had forced a kiss on her, chased her to the factory gate. "Wu Huanxi, what do you want from me?"

She walked away with her bag, glancing back as she went. "Mr. Wang, you could get on your knees and beg, and I still wouldn't turn back."

This story is entirely fictional, and is dedicated to every woman who went south for work in the 1990s.