Teaching the Ancients to Work Three Days, Rest Four

Yi Qinghuan, thirty-two, divorced, an only child, raising her five-year-old daughter, Yiyi. She lives in a four-bedroom, two-living-room apartment in Nanning, bought with a down payment from her parents, and pays the mortgage herself. Her parents are farmers in the suburbs who help look after the child and cook. She used to be a Chinese teacher, but after a complaint over making a student stand as punishment left her disheartened, she quit and now sits at home unemployed.

One day, the ceiling of her study lit up: a sky screen. Each time, it offers her three candidates from ancient times. She picks one, and they come stay at her home for three days while she teaches them Chinese. The base teaching fee is six hundred yuan a day, with an additional gift of gratitude if the student is satisfied. She can refuse, but the more she refuses, the less time she gets to rest: three days teaching and four days off; refuse once, and it becomes four days teaching and three off; refuse again, and it becomes five days teaching and two off. She gets paid even if she fails to teach them, and the sky screen records ratings to protect teachers from unfair treatment.

She says she will just teach them a little, but the moment she picks up her red pen, she takes it seriously. Luo Binwang, Li Qingzhao, Shangguan Wan'er, Li Yu... One after another, they arrive, and she uses her methods for reading comprehension, essays, memorials, and legal petitions to help them face real problems. The ancients go from resisting her to respecting her, while she goes from teaching to pay her mortgage to finding healing. Her mother cooks an extra bowl of rice, her father chats about farming, and Yiyi teaches them how to use the toilet. An unemployed Chinese teacher uses her red pen to revise writings from thousands of years ago, and to bring her own life back to life.