The 1970s Sister-in-Law [Book Transmigration]

She transmigrates into a period novel as the reborn heroine’s spoiled, difficult little sister-in-law, a girl who is deliberately targeted by the heroine and meets a terrible end.

Xu Xiaoyu thinks she can still turn things around. Of course she doesn’t want the same fate as in the book. She does her best to keep the heroine from getting together with her older brother, shutting down the reborn heroine’s chance of becoming her sister-in-law. And then, naturally, she ignores the heroine and lives a completely different life.

Oh, it turns out that in the heroine’s previous life, before she was reborn, Xu Xiaoyu’s sister-in-law was her own good friend, Li Li, a young woman sent to the countryside! Great, that makes it all the more important to stop the reborn heroine from becoming her sister-in-law.

But before Xu Xiaoyu can do much at all, she realizes that her older brother truly was a business tycoon even before the heroine was reborn. He quickly notices how strangely she feels about the reborn heroine.

Well, that works out. With her brother on the case, Xu Xiaoyu can leave him to deal with the reborn heroine and just sit back and reap the rewards.

But first, she needs to explain why she’s targeting the heroine. So Xu Xiaoyu selectively reveals some of her secrets, along with how her family’s fate differs between the two lives before and after the heroine’s rebirth. At last, she gets the burden off her chest and can focus on her own life, like dating the promising young man from her village she’s only just gotten to know.

Hmm, that guy from the village who joined the military and rarely comes home actually seems pretty nice. His looks are especially her type! Her heart is starting to race!

But wait, isn’t he just a minor character in the book? She hurriedly tries to remember. Phew, he was also someone the reborn heroine screwed over. Then he can come straight to me!

The minor male character: He’d heard Xu Xiaoyu was spoiled and affected, and thought she’d be impossible to put up with. But after getting to know her: How can anyone be so adorable, so captivating, so…?

Well, she’s actually wonderful!

Please add my upcoming story to your bookshelf: The Worst Sister-in-Law of the 1970s

Premise: As the heroine’s “worst sister-in-law” in a period novel, she meets a truly miserable end. Given another chance, she decides to live up to her reputation as the worst and change the course of her life and her children’s.

What everyone thinks a terrible sister-in-law is like:

Lazy and unwilling to work, bullying her husband’s younger sister, disrespectful to her in-laws, and making the heroine’s life miserable.

What the “terrible” sister-in-law is really like:

Her sister-in-law is about to go on a blind date, and she doesn’t even offer her own new wedding clothes as a gift! She only lets the heroine borrow them! How stingy! What a terrible sister-in-law!

The heroine’s blind date goes badly, so it must be because the sister-in-law didn’t cook a decent meal! How could she not buy meat to serve? What a terrible sister-in-law, absolutely the worst!

Her mother-in-law says she hasn’t been feeling well lately and doesn’t want to work in the fields or do housework. After putting in a full day of farm labor, earning eight work points or even the full ten, the sister-in-law comes home, finishes the housework, and makes dinner for all eight members of the family. And then she doesn’t carry the food to her mother-in-law’s bedside and feed her! How terrible!! How can she be so disrespectful to her mother-in-law? Even though the mother-in-law feels unwell every few days, and when they call the barefoot doctor he can never find anything wrong, which means she just needs to get up and move around more.

No matter why the mother-in-law is stuck in bed, the sister-in-law has to finish her work in the fields, take care of the house, and, most importantly, feed her mother-in-law!

Her father-in-law doesn’t usually say anything, but his wife speaks for him. If the sister-in-law won’t listen, she’s being disrespectful to her in-laws.

Besides the heroine, her husband’s younger sister, there are several younger brothers-in-law to look after. It’s not just their daily lives, either. Once they start school, the eldest sister-in-law is like a mother, so she has to help pay their tuition too. Otherwise, she isn’t acting like an eldest sister-in-law and doesn’t care what happens to her siblings! It’s only her dowry money she’s losing, but her younger brothers- and sisters-in-law will lose their futures. Terrible! Absolutely terrible!

In the end, her parents-in-law are cared for until they pass away in peace, and her brothers- and sisters-in-law all achieve success.

After spending her whole life raising a huge family, this is what happens to the “terrible” sister-in-law:

Her two sons are just about to go to the commune middle school when something always comes up with one of her husband’s siblings. As their sister-in-law, she has to give them money and help them out. As a result, her sons never get to attend middle school. They come home after primary school and go straight back to work. How else would there be money to spend on their uncles and aunts?

The whole family works hard to look after the younger siblings, hoping they’ll return the favor once they make it big.

Then, for the sake of a large bride price, her daughter is married off to become a stepmother, and her life ends in misery.

Her sons and their parents spend their lives working like oxen in the village. The only thanks they get is a few kind words when the younger siblings occasionally come back from the city to collect local specialties.

At the end, the sister-in-law dies with her daughters-in-law resenting her. Before she dies, one of them even gives her a fierce scolding.

She has spent her whole life muddling through, and only at the very end does the scolding finally wake her up. But looking at the state of her family, it’s already too late for regret.

Before she closes her eyes, she thinks, If only I could go back to the beginning. I never want to live this way again, and I don’t want my children to have such a hard life either.

Wen Xinmei dies consumed by regret. But after she dies, she doesn’t simply disappear. Instead, she sees a book and discovers that her sister-in-law is the heroine, and that she herself is the “terrible sister-in-law” her sister-in-law talks about! Wen Xinmei is even angrier when she sees this, and somehow gets so mad she comes back to life.

Wen Xinmei returns to the time just after she got married. Her husband is honest and blindly filial, but she loves her children. She owes them for the way she treated them in her previous life, and this time she’ll make sure their lives go smoothly. She isn’t very happy with her husband, but figures he might be able to change. And even if he can’t, she can’t divorce him if she wants to have her children. So let’s see how she deals with this whole family! She’ll show them what a truly terrible sister-in-law can do.

Theme: A daughter must learn to stand on her own.