Back to 1983: I Became a State Secret by Hammering Metal

In 1983, on the eve of spring plowing, an imported Czech diesel engine that provincial experts had written off lay dead in the threshing yard. Twenty thousand mu of wheat across the county needed it in the fields, but no one noticed the young man in the crowd wearing a shabby padded jacket. His name was Chen Shi. Just three days ago, he had been the most hopeless reform-through-labor convict in Chenjiawa. His own uncle had trampled on him, seized his house, and driven his mother mad. In his previous life, he put up with it, then spent ten years hauling bricks at construction sites. This time, he was reborn. One rusty iron rod, three strikes, half a turn of a screw. “Vroom!” The moment the engine roared back to life, more than a hundred people fell silent. From Tatra trucks to ten-thousand-ton hydraulic presses, from the threshing yard to the provincial capital’s heavy industry. He would take back with his own hands everything this era owed him. Those who had trampled on him would have to kneel and watch him rise.