1988: It All Started in a Little Street Shop

In early spring of 1988, the stoves in the hutongs of southern Beijing burned day and night. The haze of cooking oil, coal dust, and clamor defined everyday life. Twenty-nine-year-old Cheng Yi had been an overlooked head chef at a restaurant chain. In her previous life, she worked herself to the bone, yet was always constrained by procedures, exploited at work, and held back by reality. Then, one late night, she was struck and killed while saving a little boy. When she opened her eyes again, she was back in 1988, living in the body of another girl with the same name. This time, there were no restaurant chains or modern equipment. All she had was an old shop on the verge of being seized, an ordinary family barely scraping by, and a whole hutong full of suspicion and ridicule. But for the first time, she saw a real chance to build a life of her own. The skills buried in her previous life would become the foundation for her comeback in this one. The dreams she had been forced to abandon before, she would fulfill with her own hands now. She would open a restaurant. From fires in the hutong’s cooking oil to scrambles for ingredients at the market, from fighting the neighborhood office for a shop to sparring with the neighbors, she used modern cooking techniques, experience from her past life, and System assistance to carve out a path through the everyday bustle of Beijing. The light in the cooking smoke, the rhythm of spatulas against woks, and the crowds lining up for food would all bear witness to how she changed her fate with her own two hands. They would also see how an ordinary woman turned “survival” into a “comeback” amid the tides of the times.