The Eccentric Family of the Seventies

Pre-release: "The Silly Family of the Seventies". Please add it to your reading list!

Blurb One

Taozi is three years old this year, and the brigade's most famous little jinx.

At three years old, she trips with every step she takes.

She chokes just drinking water.

She goes up a mountain and gets chased by monkeys.

She goes to play in the river and gets bitten by a snake.

She can't seem to get a single peaceful day.

Everyone says the Qu family is hopeless for treating a little jinx like her as a precious treasure.

The Qu family isn't having it. They have twelve sons and just one little girl. Of course they're going to spoil her!

Besides, who says their Taozi is a little jinx?

She finds silver dollars when she's walking, spots flecks of gold in the river water, brings home a huge fat snake from the riverside, and gets wild fruit from monkeys on the mountain. What is that if not a little lucky star?

Three-year-old Taozi holds her sore little head, which was hit by falling wild fruit, and munches on the fruit with tears in her eyes.

Taozi hurts, but Taozi won't cry. Taozi eats peaches.

Blurb Two

Three-year-old Taozi has been left up in a tree again. She curls up into a little ball, all wronged and miserable, and starts reviewing the words her older brother taught her, then tries to use them in context.

A weirdo is someone strange and different from everyone else.

Like her dad, who took her mom home to mooch a meal again today. Everyone in the brigade says he's shameless.

Like her mom, who got a perfect work-point score yesterday. Everyone says she's stupid for choosing a pretty boy.

Like her third older brother, who's skinny as a monkey and left her in a tree just now, then forgot about her.

Like her fifth older sister, who used her slingshot to hit the Li family's little bully yesterday.

And like her older brother, who's a weirdo too because he knows so many things...

Taozi counts on her fingers and fingers, until her head starts spinning.

Wait, that's not right. Isn't she the only girl in the family? Where did a fifth older sister come from?

Pre-release 1: "The Silly Family of the Seventies"

Qiao Shuben, a powerful survivor from the apocalypse, transmigrates and becomes the foil in a period novel.

Once able to kill zombies with a single punch, she becomes a pretty but brainless fool who barely passed with a score of zero, forming a stark contrast to the capable, virtuous heroine, who leads her whole family to prosperity.

The heroine is clever and capable, handling everything at home and outside. She has been one of the brigade's most capable people since childhood. She helps her family build up capital through difficult times, then starts a business after the country opens up and becomes the richest person around.

And Qiao Shuben, the cautionary example in the book, is nothing but a pretty face. She makes no effort to improve herself. Her family is among the wealthiest in the brigade, yet she ends up marrying an ordinary man, putting down roots in the countryside and living an ordinary life.

Qiao Shuben has always looked down on pretty fools. But now she watches the heroine struggle to swallow scratchy cornmeal buns, then looks at the fragrant sugar-water egg and rice paste her grandma feeds her.

Mmm, delicious.

Being a pretty fool isn't so bad.

But...

She looks at her biological father, the family's only son, who is over twenty and still can't carry things on his shoulders or lift them with his hands. He has to call his parents to change the roof, and all he has going for him is his face.

Then she looks at her biological mother, the only daughter in her family, who's over twenty and can't even sweep the floor or cook a meal.

Qiao Shuben falls into deep thought.

So they're a whole family of fools?

Theme: Family happiness is the greatest joy