1983: Old Debts in the Ledger

In 2026, Zhou Xiangdong, a corporate liquidator who had spent half his life at the negotiating table, suddenly dropped dead during a meeting. When he opened his eyes again, he was back in Huainan County in 1983. He was eighteen, dirt poor, and his father had just been set up by the head of the supply and marketing cooperative, saddled with a ruinous debt of 2,000 yuan.

And in his arms was an old ledger of unknown origins.

The first page recorded the pension money his second uncle had swindled from his grandfather. The second recorded the dowry his mother had lost to a middleman. From the third page onward, the price of pork in 1983, the fashion for trousers in 1984, and the wave of people heading south in 1985 were all recorded in meticulous detail.

The ledger kept track of debts, and it knew the market. Clear an old debt, turn to a new page.

Zhou Xiangdong closed the ledger and smiled: This time around