Chapter 1
By the end of April, the days were already getting longer, yet the chill of northern spring still lingered. Only the grass along the roadside occasionally leaked a hint of green.
In a small cubicle on the second floor of the railway guesthouse, a kang bed just big enough for two was barely warm.
Tian Cuifen couldn’t stand wearing her coat indoors, so she took it off and hung it on the rack by the door. Then she picked up the bamboo-covered hot water bottle by the green baseboard and poured a cup each for the young woman and the boy sitting across from her.
“It’s been, what, over five years since we last met? When we left, Wanhui was only this tall.”
She gestured in front of her chest. “I didn’t expect him to grow so much. I almost didn’t recognize you two at the station. It’s a pity our kang collapsed recently — we’re still repairing it these days, so there’s nowhere decent for you to stay. You’ll have to make do here at the guesthouse.”
That’s what she said aloud, but deep down she was thrilled they weren’t staying at her home. If she had her way, they wouldn’t have come at all.
Back during the land reform, her husband, Old Li, had been a bookkeeper for a landlord. His political background was… sensitive. To avoid being implicated, they’d had to sacrifice their only son — by betrothing him in a child marriage to the daughter of Xia Lao-san, the militia captain.
Xia Lao-san was capable, upright, and—most importantly—politically “red to the core.” Thanks to that, the Li family made it through those turbulent years safely.
And that girl from the Xia family was nothing short of beautiful.
Xia Lao-san’s wife had been the village beauty, and Xia Shao took after her. Even after an entire summer under the sun, her skin was still so fair it could squeeze out water. At the station earlier, even among all the blue-green jackets and braided hair, she stood out at a glance.
But however pretty she was, she was no longer a match for their Baosheng.
In the Northeast, where land was vast but people scarce, there had been a shortage of workers since the founding of the country. Old Li had connections—he’d brought his family to the Northeast back in ’57. Now he worked as an accountant at the vegetable and grocery store, and Baosheng had a job at the machinery factory.
Meanwhile, the Xia family was still scraping by in the rural plains. What city family would want a peasant girl as a daughter-in-law?
And yet, since the Xias had helped them in the past, they couldn’t just break off the engagement first—that would look ungrateful. So they dragged it out instead.
Four years ago, when Xia Shao turned eighteen, they said nothing about marriage and didn’t even bother to send a letter back.
They thought the Xia family would get the hint—that they’d realize they were no longer a good match and would find another husband for their daughter. But when the Xias saw how well the Lis were doing, they shamelessly clung tighter, even sending the girl all the way up north.
Three days ago, when the letter from down south arrived, Tian Cuifen and Old Li hadn’t slept a wink all night. She was still seething.
If she’d known this would happen, she’d never have written home to say they were doing well.
Still, it wasn’t so bad. Xia Lao-san had died during the three-year famine, and his wife was a timid, useless woman. Only a half-grown boy had come north to accompany the bride—easy enough to fool. Tian Cuifen had told them her home was under repair, and they’d believed it, letting her bring them to the guesthouse.
She sighed deliberately. “Your Uncle Li got the letter. We know why you’ve come. It’s not that we’ve been avoiding you—your Brother Baosheng joined the army. To enlist, he even had to change his registered age, three years younger. The army has rules—you can’t marry until you’re twenty-five.”
Li Baosheng was actually twenty-four, two years older than Xia Shao. With three years shaved off, it meant at least four more years before he could marry.
But Xia Shao had already waited four years. Another four, and she’d be twenty-six, twenty-seven—an old maid by rural standards.
At that, Xia Wanhui frowned deeply. Seeing this, Tian Cuifen put on an even more apologetic tone. “I know Xiaoshao isn’t young anymore, and if this keeps dragging on, people will start talking. But your Brother Baosheng insisted on joining up—we couldn’t stop him. If you find someone suitable, please don’t wait on our account. It’s our fault for not thinking it through, but we won’t hold it against you.”
In the countryside, girls married young. Twenty-two was already considered late—twenty-six or twenty-seven was nearly unthinkable.
Even if the Xias didn’t care about gossip, there were still other ways to ensure things never happened. Xia Shao couldn’t wait until she was forty.
Sure enough, the boy’s face darkened.
“Why didn’t you say so earlier? My father wrote years ago asking about the wedding, and you never replied…”
He shot to his feet, but before he could say more, Xia Shao tugged lightly at his sleeve.
She’d barely spoken since they arrived, head bowed like someone timid in an unfamiliar place. When her brother turned toward her, she only shook her head, and he—though fuming—sat back down.
Tian Cuifen knew then that Xia Shao was just like her mother: timid and easy to bully.
Her own daughter, Ladi, had bullied the girl plenty back then, bossing her around this way and that, and Xia Shao had never once talked back.
So long as she sent these two back home, everything would be fine. Pretending not to hear the boy’s frustration, Tian Cuifen took out a covered bowl from her cloth bag. “I made these buns this afternoon. Eat and rest early. Tomorrow, I’ll buy your tickets and see you off.”
The moment she left, Xia Wanhui jumped up again, pacing anxiously across the small room.
They always said, “A daughter marries up, a son marries down.” If their family hadn’t been desperate, they’d never have sent Xia Shao all the way here.
Xia Lao-san had been a tireless worker—if others earned ten work points, she earned twelve. But hard work couldn’t beat famine. With each person only allotted twelve jin of grain a month, food had run out fast.
They’d ground up everything—sweet potato skins, elm bark, wheat husks, even corn cobs—and mixed them into their flour.
Xia Lao-san had a big appetite and died after eating too many corn cobs, unable to pass them.
After he died, only the eldest brother could work full-time, and life became even harder for the younger siblings.
Wanhui was lucky—his mother secretly gave him a little extra. But as a daughter, Xia Shao would get rapped on the hand with chopsticks for drinking one more mouthful of porridge.
Starved for too long, she finally couldn’t take it and stole some corn meant for spring planting.
Those seeds had been soaked in pesticide to keep birds away.
By the time Wanhui found her, she was unconscious, foam at her mouth. The barefoot doctor had to pour down six bowls of mung bean water before she barely made it through. The corn kernels she threw up were still whole.
They were that hard—and she’d swallowed them whole out of hunger.
Her mother was terrified after that, but couldn’t control her son, so she sent Xia Shao away—to marry in the Northeast. Who could’ve guessed Li Baosheng was “away in the army”? Where were they supposed to find another husband now?
And besides, how could they say they couldn’t wait for a soldier? That would sound terrible.
Wanhui was so anxious his forehead was sweating. But when he turned, his sister was leaning comfortably against the kang, eating a bun, looking almost content.
He snapped, “How can you still eat at a time like this?”
“Even now, I still have to fill my stomach,” Xia Shao said softly—her voice as gentle as her looks.
She picked up another bun and handed it to him. “No ration ticket needed. Might as well eat while we can.”
That was true enough—these days, you needed ration coupons for everything, especially national ones for food across provinces.
Those were only given to workers traveling on official trips. Peasants could never get them. For three days on the road, Wanhui had lived on dried sweet potatoes—he was sick of them. He took the bun instinctively and bit in.
“What’s in it? Not bad.”
“Wild celery. Northerners call it big-leaf celery. No pesticide, no fertilizer—completely organic.”
“Our celery back home doesn’t have fertilizer either,” he grumbled.
Fertilizer was rare—only approved for collective use. He didn’t see the point. He wolfed down the bun and reached for another, when something dawned on him.
“Sis! This is about your whole life—can’t you take it seriously?”
Maybe it was the pesticide poisoning, but lately Xia Shao had felt sluggish and lazy. She no longer worked as hard, and when her brother glared at her during meals, she pretended not to notice and just kept eating.
At least since the poisoning incident, the village gossip about her brother had kept him from going too far.
Even so, her timid nature made it surprising that she’d agreed to travel all this way. But when their mother suggested it, she’d gone along easily—eating and sleeping well on the hard train seat all the way north.
Seeing his sister still calm, Wanhui grew more flustered. She took a sip of water and said, “Do you really believe Li Baosheng’s in the army?”
“Isn’t he?”
“Uncle and Aunt Li treasure him like their eyeballs. You really think they’d let him go suffer in the army?”
Li Baosheng was their miracle child—born after three daughters: Zhao-di (“Bring a little brother”), Yin-di (“Attract a little brother”), and Dai-di (“Lead a little brother”). Even after that, they had another girl—Lai-di (“Come, little brother”)—but twenty years later, no brother ever came.
Their only son, their precious root—he’d never even been allowed to pull weeds, let alone serve in the army.
“Then Aunt Li lied to us?” Wanhui finally caught on.
But being young, he couldn’t quite reason it out. “Why would she lie?”
“What else? They don’t want to keep the engagement, but they also don’t want the bad reputation that comes with breaking it off.”
In the novel, the Lis had strung her along until she was thirty-five—never marrying her, never officially ending things.
The original Xia Shao was too timid to push back. When they stopped replying to her letters, she didn’t dare come north to ask. She just waited, becoming an old maid.
Later, when gossip grew unbearable, her brother—who owed someone thirty yuan—married her off to a widower twice her age.
That man was awful. His first wife had fled after years of beatings. Xia Shao suffered three miscarriages in seven years.
She finally escaped to work as a maid in the male lead’s household. But before long, the widower and his son found her and dragged her back. The book didn’t say what happened next—but it couldn’t have been good.
When Xia Shao (the modern one) read that part, she’d wanted to curse out loud.
Same name or not—how could someone take that much abuse and still go back?
And her son! He’d known exactly how miserable his mother’s life was, yet when she came secretly to fetch him, he refused to leave—and even told the widower, who went to hunt her down.
Yes—Xia Shao was a transmigrator. She’d woken up inside a period novel, right after the original girl had nearly died from pesticide poisoning.
At first, she hadn’t realized it. The book had barely mentioned this minor character. She’d just thought, “Well, in this era, no woman can stay single. And I can’t exactly become some countryside heroine growing crops—I can’t even keep a cactus alive.”
Li Baosheng might be a mama’s boy, but at least he had a stable job. So when her “mother” suggested the marriage trip to the Northeast, she’d agreed.
But the more Tian Cuifen dodged and stalled, the more suspicious she grew—until it finally clicked: she was in the book.
What a damn mess. In her past life, she’d just been broke—now she was broke, starving, and in danger.
Compared to this crapshoot of a life, even her stingy boss—who’d only ever given motivational speeches instead of raises—seemed lovable.
If she’d known she was going to transmigrate, she’d never have quit her job and gone home, no matter how stagnant life in Beijing was.
Going bald was still better than dying from bad liquor at a farewell party.
Still, if she had one redeeming trait, it was that she took things in stride.
She wasn’t the original Xia Shao—she wouldn’t waste her life waiting, only to be sold off for thirty yuan. Since she’d come all the way north, she had no intention of meekly staying in the guesthouse and being sent home.
Seeing her brother still fretting, Xia Shao handed him another bun. “We’ll find out soon enough. Finish eating first—then go ask around.”
No point overthinking. Action was all they could take.
Wanhui hurriedly wolfed down the last bite, wiped his mouth, and moved to go out.
But Xia Shao glanced out the window at the darkening sky and sat back down.
“It’s already 1962,” she said. “Who’s still working overtime? Let’s go after nine tomorrow morning.”
