Back to 1984: Building Cars in a State-Owned Factory

Before his rebirth, Jiang Weidong signed the acquisition agreement. Before putting pen to paper, he habitually wiped the pen tip with his cuff—a habit that had accompanied him as he signed away his hometown's thirty-year-old soda brand to foreign investors, signing out four words: 'profound righteousness.' When he opens his eyes again, it's May 1984, in the bottling workshop of a state-owned soda factory. Thirty-seven boxes of returned goods crash onto the back of his head. The factory owes wages, inventory is piling up, and the supply and marketing cooperative has issued an ultimatum; the deputy factory director's abacus clicks away, with a thirteen-yuan hole padded on a single bag of sugar's account. No one knows that this temp worker hauling returns has come back with twenty years of fast-moving consumer goods expertise. Even less does anyone know that the line of inaccurate numbers in his pocket will save his life on the day the red-headed document arrives—a reborn person's foreknowledge is used up a bit each time he bets right; what can be carried across the timeline is only skill, and rules. He can verify the authenticity of a bottle of soda, so he can sort out a mess of accounts; he can grab autumn's sugar, so he can write receipts no one can overturn. From the ice stall at the theater entrance to the county's bid-opening platform, he says: On my first day at the factory, the first entry in the accounts must be clean. As long as the spring exists, the brand exists. In that column, only the two words 'use' are written, and he will redeem them stroke by stroke into his own name. — Description from novelcodex.org