The Farmer's Wife Strikes Back: Period

The ongoing novel Ordinary Family Moves to Hong Kong City is looking for follows and bookmarks! Blurb: We thought the day the Martyrs' Work Group delivered the casualty notice would be the most painful day our Guo family would ever face. We never imagined that was only the beginning. Our future held something far worse: not one of us would be spared. We couldn't just sit back and die, so the Guo family once again began a life of leaving home behind.

Happy Lunar New Year, everyone! May the Year of the Ox bring you good fortune!

The main story and all the extras are complete. Feel free to rate the novel. Thank you!

Notice: The main story was completed on July 4, 2020, and the extras were completed on December 30, 2020. (Extras: Su Yao, Cheng Zhong, Su Shan, Su Ying, Cheng Yi, Cheng Zhi, Su Yue, Cheng Xin, Head Shopkeeper Ming, Ye Youqin, Jin Xiaohe, and Ye Yongxu.)

The novel's blurb:

In the winter of 1955, Zhu Jiaojiao nearly died giving birth to her first son. As she drifted in and out of consciousness, she seemed to have a dream. When she woke, she cast off her affected airs. In an era when she was supposed to be a farmer's wife, she had to look the part.

This novel is also known as Our Whole Village Gets Rich Thanks to My Family, The 1950s Farmwife Strikes Back, Bringing the Whole Village Along to Make a Fortune, The Heroine Has Plenty of golden fingers, A Guide to Getting Rich in the 1950s, The Development of My Dad & My Husband, or The Development of Our Family.

PS1: The novel's golden fingers: 1. The heroine's precognitive dreams. 2. Her father, Zhu Liqin. 3. Her husband, Ye Youhua. 4. Section Chief Luo. 5. Zhu Liqin's close friends. 6. Shen Cuo. 7. Team Leader Jin. 8. Cheng Zhi's “great-uncle.”

PS2: A few explanations about the novel (kept as brief as possible to avoid disrupting your reading):

1. The depth of the well in the main characters' cellar. (Chunan is a mountain city, and Laomen Mountain Village sits even higher. The villagers live high up on the mountain, where the geology is complex. Shallow digging finds no water, while digging to a medium depth yields dirty water. Wells need to be forty or fifty meters deep, and deep wells are extremely expensive, so there are few in the village. The main characters' home is at the foot of the mountain, so the depth has been adjusted accordingly. If you're curious, look up the depth of wells in mountainous areas. The dozens of negative reviews about the well are genuinely too much to bear...)

2. The tool used to haul a thousand catties of cargo. (A handcart with four pulleys, modeled on real loading and unloading equipment. It can carry a very heavy load.)

3. Paying for a sewing machine in installments. (This comes from the Shanghai Local Gazetteer. After cotton cloth came under unified purchasing and distribution, demand for clothing production was restricted and sewing machines stopped selling. Installment plans were once used to promote them heavily. Chapters Eight and Nine, along with the author's notes, include detailed references and links.)

4. The quantity and prices of dried vegetables. (The quantities are based on consultations about yields at the time, while the prices are estimates based on what I was told and the fresh-vegetable prices I found.)

5. A wild boar weighing a thousand catties. (It's a rumor, and it's unclear whether it's true. I used it to move the plot along. But deep in the mountains, let's just say one existed.)

6. Timber at two yuan per hundred catties. (That works out to two cents per catty. When my elders were young, they went to market to sell firewood. Selling firewood during the crackdown on speculation and profiteering wasn't prohibited. This was the early price at the neighboring town's market, and it later rose to three yuan.)

7. The glass windows are indeed a historical anachronism. After thinking it over, I decided not to change them. The windows in the story aren't made of large sheets of glass. They're assembled from small diamond-shaped panes made of glass shards, each about the size of a mahjong tile. I remember seeing windows like these as a child, though I haven't researched whether they really existed at the time.

8. Plastic. (The plastic sheeting for the vegetable greenhouses was bought at a high price. Using it together with oilcloth extended its lifespan, and Laomen Mountain could afford the cost relative to the returns. The food packaging bags are the extra-large type commonly used at the time.)

9. Su Ying playing tricks on Su Yao, and the heroine's response. The heroine doesn't advocate hitting children. She first gives her a verbal lesson; I didn't express that well due to my poor writing. Then she takes away Su Ying's privilege of choosing dishes. During difficult times, the family uses that privilege to encourage the children. The heroine's father also punishes Su Ying, but he thinks being clever isn't entirely a bad thing. She just shouldn't use it against her own family. That's all.

10. Warning! Spoilers ahead! Regarding Ye Youhua's role in the story and why the son of a live-in son-in-law bears the surname Ye: before marriage, they agreed that their second son would bear the surname Zhu. After the incident, Ye Youhua's class background was safer. In the dream, he never changed his surname in the end because the couple had grown distant. Chapter Sixty-Four says they shared a bed but dreamed different dreams. That's also why, after waking from the dream, the heroine was so cold toward her husband. The story opens with the heroine, so Ye Youhua has little presence early on. The ongoing extra about Head Shopkeeper Ming hasn't reached the live-in son-in-law agreement yet. Yes, this spoiler is here because of all the negative reviews.

11. “Father-in-law and son-in-law” refers to a wife's father and her husband. The term appears in Act Two of Cao Yu's Wang Zhaojun.

That's all for now. I'll add more if needed. If you have questions, please read the explanations first. Thank you!

A Jin's author page: http://www.jjwxc.net/oneauthor.php?authorid=1123705 Click the image below to go straight there ↓

Upcoming fantasy novel: The Female Supporting Character Doesn't Want to Die [Book Transmigration]

Completed sci-fi novel: Dad Has Precognitive Powers

Completed fantasy romance: The Princess's Marriage

Theme: When poor, cultivate yourself alone; when prosperous, help the world.