★ Complete
Check out my new novels in the author’s collection: The Sickly Beauty Is the Big Shot’s White Moonlight in a Period Novel and My Sister-in-Law in the Seventies Made It Big. Please add them to your favorites! Their blurbs are at the very bottom. There are also several completed period novels to enjoy.
★ Original title: The Island Factory Director of the Seventies
Blurb:
After transmigrating, Du Mingyue becomes a pitiful girl in the 1970s who was switched at birth. She is beautiful and alluring, but fate has dealt her a cruel hand.
Her adoptive parents favor sons over daughters, beat and berate her at the drop of a hat, and plan to sell her off to secure a bright future for their son. Meanwhile, her greedy, lecherous fiance keeps pressuring her at every turn.
Caught between wolves and tigers, how could her life be anything but miserable?
But Du Mingyue, who had made her way alone in the world in her previous life, says, “That’s nothing!”
With her adoptive parents, she pretends to be ill during the day to avoid housework and secretly stashes things at night so she can run away.
With her scummy fiance, she acts sweet and says, “You’re so good to me,” while stringing him along with empty promises.
As it happens, the Lin family’s biological daughter comes to claim her, and Du Mingyue wastes no time packing her bags and leaving. She even manages to fleece her adoptive family for a hefty parting gift.
She expects life back in the countryside to be hard, but it turns out her father is the brigade leader, her mother works at the commune, and she has two older brothers and a younger brother. Her whole family is obsessed with doting on their daughter, younger sister, and big sister!
Du Mingyue goes from being a servant girl to a little princess. But she has barely had time to enjoy her new life when she suddenly finds out she has an arranged fiance who lives on a distant island.
Her parents are troubled. “If you don’t want to go, that’s fine...”
But Du Mingyue immediately declares, “I’m willing!”
The islands of the seventies have yet to be overdeveloped. They are rich in resources and teeming with seafood. What others call a “desolate wasteland” is a gourmet paradise in Du Mingyue’s eyes!
Spicy crab, braised fish, steamed prawns, garlic clams!
The island, here I come!
At first, the islanders take one look at Du Mingyue, with her delicate skin and dainty appearance, and shake their heads. They’re sure she’ll be crying to leave before long.
But to their surprise, not only does she stay, she even opens a factory and leads the islanders in earning money, steadily improving their standard of living!
Watching their wallets grow fatter as the island’s seafood is sold nationwide and the island becomes a famous tourist destination, everyone wants to say to Du Mingyue:
Comrade Du, you’re our goddess!
They even see Huo Xiao, Battalion Commander Huo, the toughest man in the military, soften into a devoted lover, happily washing her clothes by hand and murmuring, “Did you overdo it last night? Let me rub your back.”
Passersby blush. “Oh my goodness, wasn’t Battalion Commander Huo supposed to see her as a little sister? That’s no little sister. She’s clearly his precious darling!”
Lin Shishi is reborn. In her previous life, she learned the truth about her birth by chance only moments before she died. She had spent decades struggling in the countryside, and she hated how unfairly fate had treated her.
So, reborn, she does everything she can to expose the mystery of her birth and finally makes it back to the Lin family. Looking at their grand Western-style house, her well-dressed parents, and her refined fiance, she vows to hold on to everything!
As for the Du family in the countryside and that poor fiance she’s never even met?
Lin Shishi turns her back and forgets all about them, eagerly throwing herself into her new life with the Lin family. She thinks she’ll finally live the good life she’s always dreamed of in the city, but the Lin family’s life turns out to be nothing like she imagined!
When Lin Shishi is nearly numb from the Lin family’s preference for sons and the cruelty of her in-laws, she hears that the Du family has made a fortune, built a new house, and bought a car.
And Du Mingyue, who was supposed to be inferior to her in every way, is still as charming as an eighteen-year-old, pampered by her family and husband, and has even become a factory director?!
How can this be!
Male lead’s perspective:
When Huo Xiao learns that his family has arranged for his fiance to come find him on the island, he refuses. He has no interest in marriage and cares only about his career. But his parents act first and tell him only after the young woman has boarded the train.
With no choice, Huo Xiao accepts it and decides to keep her by his side. They’ll be husband and wife in name only, with no interference in each other’s lives.
Later...
Huo Xiao: ...My face hurts.
Blurb for My Sister-in-Law in the Seventies Made It Big:
Only after her death does Qiu Lianyi learn that she was the cannon-fodder little sister-in-law in a period novel.
The sister-in-law relies on her good looks to act spoiled and haughty from childhood, looking down on everyone and showing no respect for her elders. She never takes her impoverished sister-in-law seriously and makes life difficult for her family at every turn. Her sister-in-law often cries about it at night, breaking her older brother’s heart. He turns around to lecture her, while their parents earnestly remind her that they are all family and she should let go of her grudges.
But the little sister-in-law refuses to listen and keeps causing trouble, turning the whole household upside down and making life unbearable. In the end, everyone turns against her, and she spends her life alone.
Meanwhile, the sister-in-law leads the whole family to a comfortable life through her frugality and hard work.
That’s the story from the male and female leads’ perspectives.
But from Qiu Lianyi’s point of view, her sister-in-law is the one who keeps sticking her nose where it doesn’t belong.
She quietly calls Qiu Lianyi extravagant for rubbing face cream on her neck. When Qiu Lianyi adds an egg to her noodles, she laments that it could have been sold for money. And when her family visits, she bundles up the old clothes she’d kept to make into bags and gives them away, then looks innocently horrified when asked about it, saying she thought Qiu Lianyi didn’t want them...
Did Qiu Lianyi do anything wrong? She doesn’t think so.
Would she have snapped at her sister-in-law if the woman hadn’t interfered with her way of life?
Luckily, Qiu Lianyi knows from her previous life that the whole family will eventually be won over by her sister-in-law’s “hardworking and thrifty” lifestyle, while she herself will be cast aside by her family for being “stubborn and beyond saving.”
Qiu, whose heart is as cold as someone who’s spent ten years killing fish at RT-Mart, Lianyi: If I can’t afford to offend them, I can at least stay away!
The 1990s are full of business opportunities. Qiu Lianyi dresses to the nines, armed with ambition and a silver tongue, and heads to Guangzhou.
Much later, the Qiu family builds a three-story house in their hometown and buys an apartment in the county seat. They become the most envied family in the area.
Thinking of the little sister-in-law who left home to work, the eldest sister-in-law decides to put aside their grudges and have her husband call her back. They can give her a job minding the shop and cleaning, which would be the last kindness they owe her as family. But then a newspaper flutters into their hands.
“The Wedding of the Century! The Son of Hong Kong’s Richest Man Pursued His Girlfriend for Three Years and Finally Won Her Heart! Sources Say His Girlfriend Is a Self-Made Female Tycoon...”
And the woman in the photo, wearing a diamond tiara whose name they couldn’t even pronounce, is none other than the little sister-in-law they haven’t seen in years...
PS: This should be a mindless wish-fulfillment novel. The female lead is beautiful, strong, and not miserable. There are lots of creative liberties, and the setting is only loosely based on reality.
Blurb for The Sickly Beauty Is the Big Shot’s White Moonlight in a Period Novel:
Only after her death does Xue Ruyi learn that she was the early-death supporting female character in a period novel, a tool for providing her cousin, the heroine, with a job, a house, savings, and even a devoted admirer.
In her previous life, at her cousin’s urging, she ignored her poor health to take the factory entrance exam, stayed up late creating, traveled thousands of miles to enter competitions, and worked herself to the bone to achieve great success. Her father was promoted thanks to her, her fiance often borrowed money from her, and her cousin even offered to manage the household while Xue Ruyi was busy with work.
She thought everything was in order, never realizing that her father secretly resented her for not being attentive enough and was as close as a father and daughter with her cousin. Her fiance thought she was too cold and was secretly carrying on with her cousin behind her back.
When she learned the truth, she dropped dead from overwork. Everything she had won by sacrificing her health was taken over by her cousin after her death.
Xue Ruyi: ...So what was the point of working myself to the bone in my last life?
Living again, Xue Ruyi decides to go completely wild and give up altogether!
Her father’s promotion isn’t going well?
In one ear and out the other: “Oh.”
Her cousin doesn’t have a job?
She rolls her eyes: “What’s that got to do with me?”
Her fiance wants to get back together?
“Get lost!”
After she stops working herself to death, Xue Ruyi discovers that not only is she happier, her health is better, and even her luck has improved.
Otherwise, why would Yan Ze, the best young man in the whole neighborhood and every girl’s dream husband, propose to her?
Male lead’s story:
Yan Ze is the most outstanding young man in the compound. He’s handsome, has a bright future, and comes from an excellent family. Yet he’s in his late twenties and still unmarried. Everyone starts whispering that he has some kind of hidden ailment, and his family is at their wits’ end. They give him one final ultimatum: find a partner, or they’ll arrange one for him.
A few days later, they see him come home holding Xue Ruyi’s hand in one hand and their marriage certificate in the other.
Everyone, including the Yan family, assumes he just picked someone at random to get married and satisfy his family.
But only Yan Ze knows the truth.
He’s waited years for this day.
(He’s secretly loved her for years. The female lead is a delicate beauty, and the male lead is a cool, devoted lover. He’ll dote on her endlessly!)
Theme: Be content and find joy.
The Cannon-Fodder Younger Sister-in-Law Thrives in a Period Novel
My Former Dynasty's Live-In Son-in-Law Has Arrived
Let Her Be Adored
The Pretty Supporting Female in a Period Novel
The Delicate Stepsister of the Female Lead in a Period Novel
I Became the Female Lead's Foil in a Period Novel
After Dying Again and Again, I Became the Strongest in the Apocalypse
The 1970s: My Early-Dying Ex-Wife Refuses to Die