The 1970S: From the Start, I Break Off My Engagement and Find a New Job

In the factory compound of the 1970s, Lin Qiuhe was known to everyone as a “gentle beauty.” Her eyes and brows were soft, her voice timid, and she was always clutching a faded corner of her washed-out clothes, as if a breeze could knock her over. She clutched her ration coupons and waited, red-eyed, for her sweetheart. It wasn't true love: she had her sights set on the connections of the Zhou family's “workshop director.” She cried to her parents that “if I can't find a job, I'll be sent to the countryside,” then turned around and used the money from selling an old silk scarf to bribe the personnel director. When she was assigned to the winding section and worked until she trembled, she still smiled and poured water for her coworkers. You think she's a pushover, but she's already worked out exactly “who can help me, and how I can climb the ladder”! Her father's leg was injured? She bought him medicinal plasters so the family's “pillar” would remember her kindness. She was gentle to her younger siblings? She wanted to build a reputation as a “sensible big sister.” Even when her sweetheart brought her malted milk, she could cry about the “humiliation of breaking off the engagement,” then turn around and use him as a stepping stone. Everyone said she had a hard life and got by on tears, but only Lin Qiuhe knew the truth: her weakness was an act, her tears were calculated, and every “I can't do it” and “I'll accept my fate” was a disguise that helped her climb steadily from a factory cubicle to a brick house with its own courtyard!