Returning to the City with a Child to Open a Teahouse [The 1980s]

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Zhao Wenwen wakes up one day and finds herself back in 1979.

She is twenty years old, still in time to join the wave of educated youth returning to the cities, and her biological child hasn’t gone missing yet.

Her loving grandparents are still alive. Her parents haven’t been framed at the canteen. Her eldest brother and sister-in-law are still happily married. Her second brother hasn’t stowed away to Hong Kong and become a gang boss. Her fourth younger brother hasn’t been sent to prison for accidentally injuring someone in a gang fight.

Zhao Wenwen immediately takes her child back to the city.

The family’s debts need to be repaid, her child needs raising, and she has to keep her parents, eldest brother, second brother, and fourth younger brother all busy at home.

Taking advantage of the winds of reform and opening up, she decides to start by selling steamed buns from a street stall.

The neighbors all say the Zhao family has gone crazy.

The elder Zhao couple have quit their steady jobs at the canteen. The eldest son has given up his profitable truck-driving job. The second son has abandoned his bright future in Hong Kong. The whole family is helping that foolish daughter of theirs sell steamed buns from a stall.

Later, Zhao’s steamed-bun stall becomes Zhao’s Bun Shop, then grows into Zhao’s Grand Teahouse, known across the country.

Everyone envies them and praises the Zhao family for being so lucky to have such a good daughter.

[Reader’s Guide]

1. A period story. The heroine is reborn, not transmigrated into a book. A warm, everyday tale of a family working together to build a business.

2. The male lead appears much later.

Theme: Live steadily, and hard times will eventually give way to better days.