Li Guilan in the Community

Fifty-two-year-old Li Guilan retired. Having worked as a lathe in a state-owned factory for thirty-one years, she originally thought that the rest of her life would be spent cooking for her wife and worrying about her daughter. However, on the first day of retirement, she broke her souvenir shoes because of "meddling in other people's business." She also realized one thing: she had never lived for herself in this life. Since then, a turbulent figure has appeared in the sunshine of Beijing's old neighborhood. She shoveled small advertisements and was recognized as the director of the neighborhood committee. She found that her wife was hiding private money but accompanied him to repair the fishing rod; she helped single mothers dance square dances, helped old professors who lived alone find nannies, built nests for stray cats, and held flea markets in the corridors. At the age of fifty-two, she learned Chinese painting, smart phones, hip-hop, and shot short videos, painted "black coal balls" as peonies, and turned the kitchen into a live broadcast room. Surrounding her are her clumsy-tongued and attentive wife Wang Jianguo, her independent and stubborn daughter Mengmeng, and a group of hot-tempered neighbors with their own faults: Miss Zhang from the canteen who likes to spread the news, picky old Professor Chen, Captain Liu, a square dancer with a loudspeaker hanging on his waist, Xiao Zhou, a fearful tenant in the community... There is no sadistic love, it is all jokes and warmth in daily necessities. Fifty chapters are about family affairs, one chapter is lively, and every chapter has echoes. This is the retirement chronicle of an ordinary old lady in Beijing, and it is also the "late adolescence" of countless middle-aged women - it turns out that the best situation in a person's life may not be at the age of twenty, but after the age of fifty when he finally dares to live for himself.