There’s No Bowl of Meat for Me at Dinner

Reborn in ancient times as the least welcome girl in the family, she gets porridge while everyone else eats meat. Her own mother even plans to sell her to a widower for the bride price.

Agricultural researcher Su He just laughs. They won't let her eat meat? Then she'll grow her own fortune from the ground up.

Gathering herbs, pickling vegetables, clearing fields, growing ginger: from nine copper coins to a monthly income of three hundred, from sleeping on straw in the woodshed to a little house on a barren hillside. She makes her sister's dowry herself and pays off her younger brother's gambling debts. When her mother tries to seize her land, she can take it up with the survey documents in the village head's hands.

And yet that hunter, said to bring misfortune to his family and wives, keeps waiting for her by the stream. “I'm not here to protect you,” he says. “I'm here to stand by your side.”