The Beautiful First Wife Makes Money in the 1960s

[This story is complete]

In Sixies-Era Rise to Power, Song Yu is a notorious village woman. In an era when no one can eat their fill, she has wild rabbit, grilled sea bass, and stir-fried beef intestines every day. She also has a secondhand Plum Blossom wristwatch and brings home grain coupons. Thanks to her movie-star looks, she has more backup suitors than she can count on two hands.

Back in her hometown, she gets by on good relations with the educated youths and the team leader's son, eating and drinking well. Her bad reputation is known throughout the surrounding villages. When her battalion-commander husband comes to take her to the military district, the original Song Yu still refuses to behave and causes him a pile of trouble. Before long, she sets her sights on another playboy. A gold digger who looks down on the poor, she immediately cheats and remarries. Her former husband rises through the ranks and lives in comfort, while she misjudges her new husband and marries a wife-beater. He is a pathetic man who cheats and is so destitute he has nothing. The original Song Yu ends her days in poverty, becoming the perfect foil to the heroine.

The transmigrated Song Yu sets her sights on something bigger.

1

In the countryside, an educated youth gives Song Yu a tiny radio he spent 120 yuan on, after a lot of effort tracking it down. "Yu, you said you've always wanted to listen to music. It took me ages to find this."

The transmigrated Song Yu: "This is great. Don't give me anything next time. My husband will buy it for me."

The educated youth: "?"

2

In the countryside, a hunter offers Song Yu a wild duck he caught. "Yu, take it home. I'll just eat some kudzu root. I'll be fine."

Song Yu accepts the duck with one hand and hands him five yuan with the other. "You're so kind. I'll come buy meat from you again."

The hunter: "?"

3

Everyone gets three liang of grain a day, but the officials give Song Yu extra cured duck, cured chicken, and two bags of flour.

Song Yu hands over her grain and meat coupons. "Please don't do this next time. I'm afraid my husband will get the wrong idea."

The officials: "…"

4

At last, her husband comes to take her home.

He's an extremely aloof and stern man.

The first time they meet, Song Yu throws herself into his arms and sniffs. "Honey, life in the countryside was so hard. I couldn't get enough to eat or keep warm, but it didn't matter because I love you so much! Also, you're ridiculously handsome!"

Song Yu goes on, "If you ask what kept me going in the countryside, holding on to our home, it was all my longing and love for you."

Her husband is deeply moved.

5

On her first visit to the military compound, Song Yu is strolling around alone when a soldier stops her and asks, "Whose family member are you?"

Song Yu thinks for a while. Oh no, what is her husband's name? "Jiang? Jiang... what was it?"

The soldier asks again, "At least you remember what he looks like, right?"

Song Yu thinks hard but can't remember. Damn, don't all men look alike?

Someone passing by hears her: "…" So this is what they call love?

After getting married, Song Yu grows rich through her main job and side businesses. Her life gets better and better. Relying on a man is no better than relying on yourself. Yeah, this is the good life!

Her husband is baffled: How did his wife end up richer than him?

Content warning: The original heroine is portrayed negatively. The male and female leads don't meet until relatively late, in Chapter 54.

[Book recommendation] Coming soon: The Real Heiress of the Eighties Military Compound

Ruan Tang, the rich and beautiful girl of the military compound, seems to have started life at the finish line.

Her grandfather is the top commander of the national defense forces, and her grandmother is a scientist at the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Her father is a young major general, and her mother is a pioneering doctor in obstetrics and gynecology.

Ruan Tang's life seems unstoppable, but her family recently discovered that she isn't their biological daughter.

After they bring Yan Yan, a grubby little girl, back from the countryside hundreds of miles away, Ruan Tang looks at her as if she's a grain of sand.

The real heiress is mocked by the other children in the compound and ostracized at school. Ruan Tang merely smiles faintly and tells her, "If I were you, I'd have gone back to the countryside already."

Growing up with a gambling father and an abusive mother, Yan Yan learned at a young age that she needed to earn money to pay for her education.

She collects bottles, cardboard, and scrap metal, then spends weekends making hair clips and women's skirts to sell on the streets and at the train station. At the end of each term, she sets up a tutoring class to coach her classmates and younger students preparing for the middle-school entrance exams, earning a fortune.

By the age of eleven, Yan Yan has nearly a thousand yuan in savings. After her biological parents bring her home, she uses her own money to buy skirts, toys, chocolate, and ice cream. Every time, the fake heiress, Ruan Tang, glares at her and asks, "Did you steal money from the family again?"

Yan Yan smiles. "Do you want some? I'll treat you."

The boy Ruan Tang likes in the compound is called Qi Ziqi. When he sees Yan Yan, he asks, "Ruan Tang says you bullied her?" He has noticed Yan Yan selling little toys like bubble-blowing toys and slingshots near the residential compound, and he's curious about her.

"What, are you going to stand up for her?" Yan Yan isn't particularly skinny or plump. On the contrary, she's a beauty in the making, with a fair, rosy complexion.

"I'm applying to be a tutor at your tutoring class," Qi Ziqi says. "Do you need a top student who's even better than you?"

Yan Yan tells him, "There's no one in the world who's a better student than me."

[Book recommendation] Recommended: Little Xingyu's The Green Tea Ex-Wife in a Period Novel

Jiang Zhezhe closes the male-oriented period novel and shakes her head. What a brainless story, all over-the-top wish fulfillment. Even the author probably wants to jump in and enjoy it. What's there to like? She tosses the book aside and goes to sleep.

When she wakes up, she has transmigrated into a book, becoming the male lead's ex-wife, who is destined to die of a terminal illness in six months?

The house is bare, and yellow dust billows outside.

At last, a man comes home. With a scowl, he glares at his wife, who has just sold the last of their food to buy pretty clothes. Unable to bear it anymore, he says, "Get out."

She rolls her eyes and launches into an act: "Honey, the person selling the clothes wasn't just anybody. It was your future, um, you-know-who! Waaah!"

The man works a whole day, then comes home to catch the chicken she let loose. Furious, he says, "Get out."

She hurriedly rolls off the kang and buries her face by his legs, sobbing. "The chicken ran away with its egg!" As she speaks, she wipes the broken egg off her mouth.

In the middle of the night, the man drags home a wild boar. He told her to keep a fire going, but now it's out, and the person waiting for him is sleeping soundly on the kang. She turns over as if she's spotted something. The man is about to say his familiar line: "Get..."

She immediately buries her face beside the boar, then realizes her mistake and moves to his legs. "The fire had a mind of its own. It put itself out, waaah!"

She lets the piggies run away. She lets the chickens fly off.

The villagers see her pretty face, and her man is so fierce that they don't dare say anything to her.

She sniffles and wipes away her tears. "I can't do anything. I'm really a useless good-for-nothing, waaah."

The man, driven away by having no rice to cook and by his useless wife making his life impossible, runs off.

Six months pass, but she doesn't die. She didn't die? Waaah, her man ran away. What is she supposed to do?

What can she do? She has to stand on her own: take exams, go to school, find influential people to support her, and start a factory.

At last, the successful man appears out of nowhere, ready to take his useless wife off to a good life. Huh? This college student is his useless wife?

Theme: Everyone's life is hard. Don't give up on yourself. Work hard, and flowers will bloom in the desert.