Reborn in a Bygone Era: Chen Yu Leads His Village to Prosperity

Chen Yu died in the winter of 1998. He froze beneath an overpass in the provincial capital, the last train ticket south to find work tucked against his chest. The warmth of his body had softened the ticket, but he himself had gone stiff.

When he opened his eyes again, he was lying on the earthen bed in the old house in Chenjia Village. Beneath him was a mattress patched seventeen times, and from the kitchen came the wheezing cough his grandmother had suffered for half her life. The calendar on the wall read October 23, 1983, by the lunar calendar. Outside, his seven-year-old little sister was fighting with the neighbor's dog over a piece of sweet potato peel.

In his previous life, he'd left home chasing what people called "making something of yourself." He missed his grandmother's funeral, his little sister's wedding, and the mountains and seas around him. In the end, the numbers in his bankbook couldn't buy him a single hot meal.

In this life, Chen Yu wasn't going anywhere.

In a snowdrift in the back mountains, a three-hundred-pound wild boar charged straight into his shotgun. Chen Yu carried it down the mountain, leaving the whole village gaping. The poor boy "with no father, no mother, and nobody to look after him" stewed a whole pot of meat. Grandma ate three bowls, and his little sister ended up with grease all over her face.

When the tide receded at Jiaoshi Bay, everyone else was still picking oysters on the shallows. Chen Yu dove shirtless into the deep water and came up with half a sack of sea cucumbers and a basket of large yellow croaker. The supply cooperative's scale could barely handle it.

The wild boar earned him a firearm permit. The sea cucumbers paid for a grand tile-roofed house.

The people who'd once laughed at him now called him "Brother Yu." Matchmakers who'd once said he was worthless were beating down his door.

Holding an enamel mug, Chen Yu squatted on the steps of his new house and watched his little sister skip off to school with her new backpack. Grandma sat in the porch sunshine, scolding him for being a "spendthrift brat who'd cooked meat again," while snatching up more meat with her chopsticks than anyone else.