Selling Candied Hawthorns in the 1980s

Mouse-person Zhu Guoguo has no home, car, savings, or job. She becomes an unemployed drifter in a crowded courtyard compound in the 1980s.

The good news: she doesn't have to go to the countryside.

The bad news: her family is so poor they can only drink the northwest wind.

Luckily, her kind grandfather lets her drink that northwest wind first.

She resolutely decides to sell candied hawthorns on the black market and pick up a temporary job at the crematorium.

But the crowded compound is never short on excitement. One day a family's chicken goes missing, the next, someone else's dog runs off.

Zhu Guoguo really has never seen anything like it.

Fine, fine. She'll earn money and watch the fun at the same time. She's going to make a good life for herself.

A year later, she's old enough to be set up on a date.

On a boat in a small park, a nervous-looking man offers her a box of boiled edamame shaped like hearts and asks,