Literary Genius, 1950: I Write Legends in a Courtyard Compound

After returning to 1950, Lin Wenyuan finds himself in a crowded Beijing courtyard, a working-class boy who never even finished junior high school.

In his previous life, he was a literature PhD who devoted himself to the history of modern Chinese literature. Now he has a head full of masterpieces from the future and puts down roots amid the bustle of everyday life.

Lu, Guo, Mao, Ba, and Cao: Lu Xun has long since passed away, but the other literary giants are still alive. By chance, they become his mentors.

He keeps a low profile in the courtyard and writes one work after another. Stream of consciousness, rural literature, and the Misty Poetry movement all make their appearance. Zhao Shuli of the Yam Egg School, Sun Li of the Lotus Lake School, Liu Qing, Lu Yao, Chen Zhongshi, and Jia Pingwa of the Shaanxi School, Wang Anyi and Feng Jicai with their Beijing and Tianjin flavors, along with Beidao, Shu Ting, Shizhi, and other young artists, all cross paths with him in turn.

He does more than reproduce works from memory. The ideas in his writing inspire a generation of local authors, helping them begin to develop their own enduring masterpieces ahead of time.

From short stories and essays to full-length novels, he later takes the stage to write crosstalk and sketches, contributes scripts to the Spring Festival Gala, and branches out into screenwriting, meeting Ma Ji, Liu Xiaoqing, and Tang Guoqiang along the way.

The literary world brings him both older friends who admire him and rivals whose beliefs clash with his.

Starting in a Beijing courtyard, his writing reaches every literary movement across the country. In an era of material scarcity but burning ideals, he awakens the times with his words, growing step by step from a courtyard boy into a literary master who shakes the entire republic.