Get the Whole Family a Stable Job [The Fifties]

When Lin Shuyan woke up, she had been transported to 1949. She was the illegitimate daughter of a capitalist family, and her relatives were all aboard a ship bound for overseas. Before she could figure out what to do, someone threw her into the sea. After narrowly escaping death, Lin Shuyan quickly accepted reality. She stripped clothes from a corpse and put them on, rushed back to the original owner’s home to loot what she could, grabbed the luggage and money, and headed for the countryside without looking back. She found the original owner’s mother’s cousin’s family and sought refuge with them, turning herself into a poor peasant. To repay the family and make a better life for herself in this era, Lin Shuyan did everything she could to secure iron rice bowls for the whole family. All right, now they were finally all in the same boat: if one prospered, they all prospered, and if one suffered, they all suffered. Time to work together toward a better life! Coming soon: The Educated Youth Returns to the City and Raises a Child Little Pei Jinhuan thinks she’s the happiest child in the world. Though she was born in the countryside, she soon went back to the city with her mother, got an urban household registration, and started eating state-supplied grain. When other children could only eat rice cereal, her mother was already giving her milk. When other children were excitedly showing off their new clothes, her mother had already opened a clothing shop named after her. Still, she has one little worry of her own. Other children’s parents live together, so when will her own parents live together? At sixteen, Zhao Mulan set off for the countryside of her own accord, full of youthful zeal and eager to take part in the sweeping rural development movement. At twenty-six, Zhao Mulan only wanted to take her daughter back to the city, get an urban household registration, and eat state-supplied grain. To return to the city, Zhao Mulan and her husband filed for divorce, and she left their daughter with him. She planned to get settled in the city first, then bring her daughter back. But the night before she was due to leave, Zhao Mulan suddenly had a dream. In it, she returned to the city only to be rejected by her family, unable to find work or register her household. After finally managing to get registered by marrying a much older divorced man, she went back to the countryside to collect her daughter, only to discover that the girl had died. Waking with a start, Zhao Mulan looked at her daughter nestled in her arms and resolved to take her back to the city. As for her divorced husband, he wasn’t part of her plans. Their marriage had never been based on love. But after the man gave her money, gold, and a house, Zhao Mulan declared, “Feelings can grow over time, can’t they?” Theme: Create a better life