A Wild Chicken Becomes a Phoenix in the Seventies

Lin Jianlu is the granddaughter of a "Stinking Old Ninth." Beauty means nothing when your family background isn't politically sound.

She was scorned, jilted, framed, and coveted. To protect herself, Lin Jianlu had no choice but to hastily marry an older mountain ranger from her grandfather's hometown.

She'd never known how good a well-kept man could be. Who knew she'd unexpectedly struck gold?

The young couple firmly believed that knowledge is power!

Others farmed, and so did she. But she found ways to read farming manuals, seek advice from agricultural technicians, and toil away at experimental plots. Her private plot yielded several times more than everyone else's.

Others knitted sweaters, and so did she. But she sought out knitting books, studied and sketched designs, and developed new styles. The city's department store even invited her to work as a technician.

Others cooked, and so did she. A knowledgeable young woman who had never set foot in a kitchen learned through study and practice, and eventually became a... No, she finally trained other people to become master chefs.

She even brought her widowed mother-in-law, husband, and sister-in-law along, the whole family working together. Little by little, their impoverished household was transformed!

From then on:

When other families planted fruit trees, so did hers. When others gathered herbs to supplement their income, so did hers. When others raised chickens and ducks, her family raised bees...

As a result, her fruit trees bowed beneath their bountiful harvest. The supply and marketing cooperative came to collect the herbs she had gathered and processed. She harvested honey again and again, helping her sister-in-law, who suffered from low blood sugar, grow rosy and healthy...

When the college entrance exams were reinstated and her grandfather was cleared of wrongdoing, the Lin family's courtyard home was returned to them. The neighbors in the alley couldn't help wondering what had become of the beautiful, quiet girl who'd been sent to the countryside. Surely she had been ground down into some uncouth village woman?

Poor Old Man Lin. His health was already poor, and now his uncouth granddaughter's in-laws would probably live off him, too.

But there was no village woman in sight, nor any uncouth country bumpkins. Lin Jianlu took her husband and sister-in-law to university in the capital, and even her widowed mother-in-law, now in her forties, started attending night school.

P.S.:

[Synopsis to be added and revised. -- 2023.11.30]

Theme: As long as life goes on, so does learning. Work together and turn the tide against adversity.