Daily Life in a Seventies Apartment Building for a Fake Couple

[Seventies Apartment Blocks / A Woman's Growth / Changing Times / Jiangnan Charm]

1978, the second year after the national college entrance exam was reinstated.

Qiao Na, a young woman from the countryside, refuses to accept her fate in an arranged marriage. She runs away to the city to seek out Lu Huaixi, an educated youth who had once crossed paths with her.

At the time, Lu Huaixi is struggling to keep the apartment in the city that his grandfather left him. To stay in the city, Qiao Na proposes that they enter a sham marriage...

After the wedding, the two keep up appearances as a “married couple” in public, while their feelings for each other slowly grow. They also go from wary strangers to close friends with their neighbors, Tian Lili and Sister-in-Law Liu and her family.

Qiao Na goes from a temporary worker folding paper boxes for the neighborhood office to getting an urban household registration and becoming an instructor in the office's literacy classes for women.

Then her younger brother, Qiao Song, is recruited to work in the city as well.

Riding the wave of reform and opening up, he goes from a construction laborer to a contractor, becoming the first “ten-thousand-yuan household” in their village...

Just as family, romance, friendship, and their careers are all moving in a good direction, Qiao Na and Lu Huaixi prepare to take the college entrance exam for a third year.

But they're told that a new policy has been introduced this year: married men and women can't register for the exam...

They're both stunned. Will they have to get a sham divorce this time?

[Reader's Guide]

1. The heroine falls in love after marriage; the hero's secret crush comes true.

2. The story takes place in the Jiangnan region.

3. This story is entirely fictional.

Theme: Changing times and women's growth