“Bang bang bang!”
“Yuanyuan, time to eat. Get up quickly.”
A grown man’s strength is great, and so is his voice. The noise left Yang Yuan groggy with sleep inside the room. “I know,” she said, then shifted to a new position and went back to sleep.
Hearing that long, drawn-out reply, the man knew exactly what the situation was. Long used to it, he put the remaining portion of breakfast in the pot and covered it, tidied up the kitchen briskly, and left, closing the door behind him.
Who knows how much longer she slept, but eventually Yang Yuan stretched and woke up.
Her arm unconsciously reached outside the covers, then immediately retracted back under. Shivering, she pulled the blanket up tighter and gave a shudder.
God, this godforsaken place is freezing.
Catching sight of the shabby, dusty brick wall beside her, Yang Yuan felt a wave of disgust and silent cursing. She really didn’t know what sins she’d committed in her past life to transmigrate into the 1970s.
Not only was there nothing to eat or drink, there wasn’t even a heating stove. She’d slept a whole night and couldn’t even warm up her bed. It was pure misery.
She had been here for a month now. At first, she thought it was just a simple transmigration, but when she heard the name Song Can, Yang Yuan froze with a jolt.
This world was actually an era novel.
The female lead, Song Can, was a poor little thing. She’d lost her mother young and scraped by with her younger brother under a stepmother’s thumb. Finally, thanks to the female lead’s halo—no, thanks to her own ability—she got a job at a printing and dyeing factory, only for her stepmother to force her to hand the job over to her stepsister.
Then, fearing Song Can would resist, the stepmother secretly signed her up to be sent down to the countryside. Of course, the female lead was no pushover. Rather than let the stepmother benefit, she sold the job outright, coaxed away her own father’s wages, stirred the whole family into chaos, and then sauntered off to the countryside.
There she met a down-and-out educated youth from the capital, Beijing. The two hit it off and became a couple. After several years of hardship together, they both got into university, returned to the city, attended Peking University, cleared the names of his family members, bought a courtyard house, had twins, and lived as winners at life.
Yang Yuan propped her head on her hand. Back when she read the novel, she’d been thrilled—it was all about the satisfaction. Now that she’d transmigrated into it, she felt a bit melancholy. Turns out her current identity was that ill-intentioned fake friend from the original story.
The original body appeared only twice in the novel. The first time was years later, when the female lead came home to visit before starting university and ran into her first love. Only then did she learn that before going to the countryside, he had written her a letter and asked the original body to pass it along—but out of jealousy, the original body had burned it instead.
The second time was near the ending, when the female lead heard gossip: the original body had been desperate to climb the social ladder but had chosen the wrong man. Her life was miserable—her husband cheated and asked for a divorce—and in a fit of rage, she hacked him to death.
Yang Yuan breathed a sigh of relief. So I’m just a background extra? Thank goodness. That can be fixed.
She got up and found the breakfast the original body’s fourth older brother had left for her. A bowl of rice broth so thin it could reflect her face had gone completely cold, along with a multigrain steamed bun and half a bowl of unidentifiable vegetable leaves.
Yang Yuan looked at it with disdain. To put it bluntly, even the dog in her family ate better than this.
But there was no helping it. The Spring Festival of 1970 had just passed, and the great famine years weren’t long behind them—every household lived like this. Besides, the Yang family was a dual-income household in the city; in the countryside, things would only be worse.
Pursing her lips, she poured out the thin broth, keeping the rice at the bottom of the bowl to mix with hot water later. Then she picked up the porcelain bowl of vegetable leaves, planning to heat it on the honeycomb coal stove in the living room.
No matter how reluctant she was, she had to eat. Man is iron, and food is steel.
Yang Yuan had just stepped out of the shabby kitchen when she heard shouting coming from the courtyard to the south.
The southern courtyard belonged to the female lead, Song Can’s family. The Yang house faced south, while the Song house faced west, and the Yang family’s southern courtyard wall was the Song family’s northern wall.
Yang Yuan listened carefully—it was the voice of Song Can’s stepmother, cursing. “Stole the household registration book… how dare she… the knitting factory…”
Occasionally, a shrill female voice chimed in, “What right do you have to make decisions for me… why doesn’t Ma Yingying go as a sent-down youth instead…”
Oh, so the plot of the book had already begun.
Last night, when Stepmother Song heard that Song Can had landed a worker position, she wanted Song Can to give the job to her own daughter, Ma Yingying. Afraid Song Can would refuse, Stepmother Song went to the Sent-Down Youth Office first thing in the morning and signed Song Can up.
Then, as soon as she got back, Stepmother Song told Song Can about both matters, and the two erupted into a fierce argument. Someone had probably already gone to fetch Song’s father from his workplace to settle the dispute. It wasn’t the first time anyway—after all these years, the neighbors were used to it.
Yang Yuan unhurriedly returned to her room to eat.
The Yang family house had been allocated after the founding of the nation—two rooms east and west, with two rooms in the middle serving as the living room. Later, when there were too many children to fit, they partitioned the living room, giving half to the boys and keeping half for guests and meals.
The west side held a wardrobe and a dressing table, and was where the girls slept. Father Yang and Mother Yang had always lived in the east room, which was later partitioned to add a small room for storage.
With the cold weather, Mother Yang moved the coal stove indoors for warmth, but fearing carbon monoxide poisoning, she placed it in the living room. When family members were home, they gathered around the stove; when no one was there, the fire door was sealed shut.
Yang Yuan sat on the family’s homemade sofa, pulled the stove over, poked the fire open, and ate toasted mantou while listening to the Sounds of the Song family’s quarrel.
There were many Yangs, but only four currently living at home: her, her fourth older brother, and her parents.
The original owner of this body was named Yang Yuan—same pronunciation, different character. During New Year’s, over a dispute about a few cents of lucky money, she had been pushed down and fallen on the steps, striking the back of her head. When she woke up, she had become… her. Well, rather unlucky.
Yang Yuan was sixteen this year. Normally she should be in her second year of high school, but due to the Movement, schools couldn’t hold classes.
The streets were loudly proclaiming, “Educated youth, up to the mountains and down to the countryside, support the construction effort!”
The neighborhood office and the Sent-Down Youth Office had already come to the Yang house several times, notifying Yang Yuan to go to the countryside. She didn’t want to go, and every time she feigned illness or pain, but this was ultimately not a long-term solution.
The Yang family had been actively looking for work for her while gently persuading her, but she simply refused to go. Because the young girl knew how hard life in the countryside was. The Yang family’s third older sister had been sent down, and besides the bitter life, there was no telling when she could return to the city. Yang Yuan was dead set on staying in the city no matter what.
Now that she was Yang Yuan, she felt the same way—going to the countryside was impossible.
Was this a joke? Even in the city, food and clothing were scarce—go to the countryside? Making someone who got winded just climbing stairs swing a hoe would be about as good as making her die all over again.
Thinking back to yesterday, when the Sent-Down Youth Office had been pounding on the door while she hid in her room pretending no one was home, Yang Yuan took a deep breath. This really couldn’t be put off any longer.
Tilting her head back, she drained the last mouthful of rice water, wiped her mouth, and washed the bowl, her mind already running the numbers.
To stay in the city, she needed a job. But in this era, every turnip had its hole—fathers retired and sons took over, children inherited their mothers’ posts, and you couldn’t even buy a position with money.
Crucially, information didn’t circulate either. Some big factories were short on workers, but before they could even post public recruitment notices, the openings were snapped up by relatives of internal employees.
Yang Yuan’s father was a steel mill worker, and even if there was an opening there, she wouldn’t be able to do the work. Her mother cooked in the back kitchen of the steel mill’s childcare class—a woman of low status and little influence—who would never get a shot at any good opportunity anyway.
If she just sat around doing nothing, waiting for her family to find her a way in, she’d probably have worked herself to death in the fields by then.
Sorting out a job was urgent. When it came down to it, she had to take matters into her own hands.
Sure, Yang Yuan was new to this world and had no real skills, but the female lead did—and the girl had even gotten into the printing and dyeing factory.
Song Can lived just one courtyard wall away from her. Couldn’t she take advantage of being so close? If jobs could be sold to other people, why couldn’t one be sold to her?
Yang Yuan was no saint. Expecting her to tip off the female lead—warn her to watch out for her stepmother and keep her job so she wouldn’t be sent down to the countryside—that was simply impossible.
She was just a small, scrappy citizen scrabbling to get by. When interests were at stake and there were too many wolves for too little meat, she’d naturally use every trick in the book within the bounds of the law.
Mulling over her plan and listening to the sounds from the south courtyard, Yang Yuan quickened her pace, finished braiding her hair, and headed out the door.