The Beautiful Bricklayer of the 70s

In 1973, Tao Nanfeng has just graduated from high school when her scheming stepmother tricks her into taking her stepsister’s place as a sent-down youth. She is assigned to the Xiufeng Mountain Farm’s road construction team.
 
Living in a drafty, leaking thatched hut, exhausted from the freezing conditions, Tao Nanfeng has a strange dream. In the dream, she enters a post-apocalyptic world and is bitten by a zombie. When she wakes the next morning, a black bite mark has mysteriously appeared on the back of her hand.
 
Terrified, she wraps the mark with a scarf and reports to the road construction team.
 
The moment she casually sits on a huge roadside boulder—
 
Boom! The rock splits cleanly in two.
 
When she braces herself against a tree—
 
Crack! The trunk snaps in half.
 
The team leader hands her a shovel with a grin.
 
“With strength like yours, you’ve definitely come to the right place.”
 
Soon afterward, Tao Nanfeng dreams that she’s bitten by a mutant rat. When she wakes, another black bite mark has appeared—this time on her ankle.
 
The next day, the entire construction team is left speechless.
 
The delicate, beautiful young woman…
 
can dig tunnels.
 
Later, Tao Nanfeng dreams that she’s nothing more than the cannon-fodder supporting female character in a period novel—a stepping stone for her stepsister, Tao You.
 
She decides she’s done keeping a low profile.
 
The other educated youths are astonished to discover that Tao Nanfeng has become hardworking and ambitious. She leads everyone in making earthen brick houses, building roads, mining phosphate, constructing factories, and even building hospitals…
 
Under her leadership, the farm flourishes.
 
Starting as an ordinary road construction worker, she rises to become head of the Infrastructure Department, then continues climbing until she becomes one of the nation’s most celebrated architects.
 
Standing beneath dazzling spotlights, the former “bricklayer” begins her acceptance speech:
 
Thank him—for clearing every obstacle in my path.
 
Thank her—for motivating me with her contempt.
 
Thank all my companions—for growing alongside me.
 
Oh…
 
And I should also thank those dreams.”