Selling Sweet Potatoes in the 1970s: What Else Is There to Sell?

Lin Wanqiu wakes up in the 1970s to a bare home and an empty grain jar.

Looking at the only two sweet potatoes she has, she decides to go sell roasted sweet potatoes in town.

People laugh at her for dreaming too big, but she uses modern recipes to create improved versions: milk-flavored roasted sweet potatoes, candied sweet potatoes, dried sweet potato strips, and more...

Starting with a battered iron barrel for roasting sweet potatoes, she builds a nationwide chain called "Sweet Potato Beauty."

Later, the cold-faced military officer comes to her door: "I hear your sweet potatoes can cure illnesses. My grandfather loves them."

The wind in the twelfth lunar month cuts across her face like a knife. Lin Wanqiu huddles in a drafty earthen house, staring at the few sprouted grains of corn at the bottom of the jar, her heart completely chilled.

Three days ago, she was an office worker in a city high-rise, working overtime until midnight. She woke up to find herself transformed into a country girl named "Lin Wanqiu." Her home was bare, her husband had died young, and her in-laws despised her as a curse on her husband, a jinx. All they had left her was this drafty shack and two mu of poor farmland. The original owner had probably been so hungry and desperate that she couldn't survive a bout of chills. Lin Wanqiu closed her eyes as the memories came flooding back: the struggle to afford food and necessities, the biting mockery, and the bowl of cold wild-vegetable gruel she'd eaten before she died.

"Grrr, " Her stomach let out a thunderous protest. She rummaged through the house and finally managed to dig two fist-sized sweet potatoes out of the ashes in the stove. The original owner had hidden them away because she couldn't bear to eat them.

She buried the sweet potatoes in the stove ashes and let them roast slowly in the residual heat. Their fragrance gradually spread, making her stomach feel even emptier. She stared at the two sweet potatoes, lost in thought, when an idea suddenly struck her: roasted sweet potatoes!

Theme: Selling sweet potatoes