Back to the Sixties: Farm, Get Wealthy & Raise the Cubs

Just finished speed reading this story. I'm amazed that some parts of it passed censorship, especially since a lot of the historical references are directly named rather than using vague euphemisms.

The general tone of the story is very much a slice of life, following MC and her family from year to year, all the way from raising three little buns on her own to getting them married off and starting to raise the grandchildren generation. The early parts when they're still living in the country feels a bit like Fields of Gold, in that it seems to be all about the food. But then I guess in that era, food is the only thing that gets people excited, lol. Later on, as the story setting transitions to the Capital, it's more about building up businesses.

There's not so much romance per se... MC a pragmatist that arrives in a body that's already married with three children, and decides to make the best of things. When her husband gets home, she finds him attractive, since she likes that kind of muscled silent type (I guess that's also fate, lol), and because he agrees to do all the farm work to "raise the family" (at least, from the POV of the fellow villagers).

At first, MC is self conscious and finds excuses to avoid sleeping with him. Then, later on, when it's unavoidable to let him know she's going to be committing dirty capitalism in the town, and he's stubbornly refusing due to communist brainwashing, MC directly uses sex to wring permission out of him. After that, there's no point to kick him out of bed, and they start living as a real married couple at that point.

ML is a hard worker and considerate husband who obeys the wife in all matters (his whole family is actually a bit like this, for better or worse), as well as having a hot bod (though sex scenes are all fade to black), so it's easy for a MC to appreciate him and come to love him.

As for the ML's side, he was previously a soldier who barely spent more than a few days total with the MC's previous host, so he has no emotional ties to the previous host. When he retired from the army due to injury, he came back to MC, who is a much more responsible person family-wise. After seeing how she took care of the children and himself, despite her sometimes acerbic comments, the ML quite easily fell for her.

Even starting off, the MC's host wasn't actually poor, compared to her fellow villagers. Her husband had a well paying military position, and pretty much sent all of his wages back. The original host spent a lot of this money on her own food and clothing, while still keeping a sizable secret nest egg. It's one of the reasons the host married him, and why the villagers looked down on her for living well while doing no labor. Later, when ML came back, he also brought a good sized retirement payment with him.

Of course, MC isn't satisfied with just this. In those early days, she uses her system to make money by essentially buying low (such as extra crops at the harvest or pork from the slaughterhouse where a friend works at) and selling high to richer clients in the county seat. Along the way, she also collects long term investments, such as future historically important stamps, jewelry/antiques which are regarded as "capitalist trash" in that political climate, etc.

Then later on, MC uses her foreknowledge of history to do business and invest in real estate, as well as helping any relatives who are honest and hardworking to do the same, and everything accumulated on each other.

ML's injury wasn't too bad and was mostly recovered by the time he arrived home. It's just that the original host would have forced him to work despite the injury and thus prevent it from healing properly. MC on the other hand, practically forced ML to not perform any heavy labor, while feeding him a lot of healthy foods, which helped him to recover with no long term ill effects. 

Aside from what was already said in this thread, the rich dude she married didn't really care about her and cheated on her with different women (predictable really with how she got him to marry her, its obvious even back then that he's a womanizer with no ambition in life) while she worked as a horse for his family to please them.

Later after she tried to trick her cousin Huzi to hook up with a known prostitute who was infertile due to her previous abortion (don't know if its her older sister or her or both who did sex for money and pleasure thing)/loose divorced woman in their neighborhood to force him to marry her, who despite her being an ungrateful shrew who sows discord within her family, Huzi still cares about her and would get into fights to protect her none existent reputation and character.

She did that to get back for the Zhou family not giving money or benefits to her and the married family to give her face so she has more voice to speak in that family and not supporting/praising her? for purposely getting knocked up to force the guy to marry her, as she was proud that she managed to marry into a rich family.

After that she became closer to that loose woman and even started a clothing business with her (don't know why she did that), it backfired on her when her brother was seduced and determined to marry that girl. When Xu Sheng Mei found out, she was horrified and furious and tried everything to separate them, even pleading for the Zhou family to interfere by cutting off her brother's channel to buy good quality cheap clothes from the big clothing factory of her cousin Erni's husband. The loose woman found out about this and became angry and told the brother about this and cried, the brother took the loose woman's side and told his sister to stop bullying his woman or else he will tell her married family the truth about her miscarriage.

Xu Sheng Mei purposely miscarried to force them to reserve a place in their factory for her brother as they didn't agree before as they looked down on her country folk brother and her husband didn't really like her family and looked down on them. That, and the Zhou family didn't agree to house and offer a job to the brother as he was a known arrogant gangster who loves picking fights for stupid things in their countryside. Xu Sheng Mei didn't admit directly if she really did that but it was implied in the story. She got afraid and reluctantly let them go but became enemies with the loose woman and blamed the Zhou family again (what else is new) for not taking her side and interfering in her stubborn adult brother's love life.

Later, the brother and loose woman got married. After trying for so many times and being urged by his mother to have a grand child already, the loose woman still didn't get pregnant and the doctor told her that her previous abortion might have damaged her body and made her infertile. The loose woman kept this from the brother.

The brother after getting into a fight 2 times in Beijing and sending the other person each time into the hospital, got into another fight. This time he was arrested and went to jail. Xu Sheng Mei and 1st daughter of grandma told this to the grandma whose really old already so predictably she fainted. But they still pestered the MiL into convincing Lin Qing He to talk to Erni's husband to get his powerful family with political ties to get the brother out of jail. The Zhou family reluctantly agreed but the relationship between the 1st daughter's family and the Zhou family became colder. The brother got out of jail and hated the Zhou family for looking down on him. Because of his temper, he again started a few fights. I'm not sure if I remember correctly but he got arrested and got out of jail again thanks to the Zhou family because of repeated pestering of his sister and mother. Until he got arrested again for I don't know how many more times and the Zhou family finally couldn't stand it and didn't help anymore. Xu Sheng Mei and her mother hated and blamed Zhou family for being uncaring to their blood kin and looking down on them by not helping anymore and cut off their relationship with the Zhou family.

Lin Qing He expressed good riddance but she and the Zhou family secretly gave some money to the wardens of the prison to take care of the brother to make sure he isn't too roughed up or injured in the prison. But they want him to stay there in prison and reflect and learn from his mistakes.

Another thing is that during the brother and the loose woman's relationship when the brother still lives in his sister's married family's house, the loose woman met Xu Sheng Mei's husband and started an affair with him. The siblings didn't know this until the brother got out of jail years later. He already knew he was wrong and while the Zhou family didn't help him get out of jail, he realized they had helped him during his time in prison and was grateful. He wanted to atone and restore his relationship with them. Zhou Qingbai saw that he was genuinely sorry and gave him another chance by offering him the employee position in the dumpling shop.

The brother got home to his loose wife and noticed one time that his wife and his sister's husband was being unusually intimate. So he investigated and found out that they had an affair for who knows how many years behind their backs. He told his sister and she became furious but told him to wait before divorcing or saying anything to his wife.

Xu Sheng Mei then proceeded to seduce another rich dude and divorced her husband and told him that she knew about his cheating. She also told him that she will marry the other rich dude to express that she can live well without him. Then the brother also divorced his loose wife and just worked peacefully in the dumpling shop.

Also in my opinion, Zhou Liuni and Xu Sheng Mei are in the same level of nastiness in personality and attitude. The difference between them is that Xu Sheng Mei can hide her awful personality better as she's a better actor, can scheme better than Zhou Liuni and she is at least loyal to her parents and her brother. It's like she can treat anyone badly for her ambitions except them.

Zhou Liuni has zero redeeming qualities but she is at least an awful actor. She is obvious and more overt in her nastiness to people and even her immediate family most of the time except for when she needs something from them. Plus, most of her extended family grew up with her or seen her grew up so they knew her real character very well. She's also more lustful compared to Xu Sheng Mei as she frequently sleeps around with the men in the village which results in her getting knocked up and forced to marry the dude to maintain her reputation. After that, I'm not sure if I remember it right but I think she still continued to cheat and sleep around with other men in secret. So she's a lustful unfilial vicious gold digger. On the other hand, Xu Sheng Mei is only focused on pursuing status and wealth at any cost. So she's a partially unfilial vicious gold digger and social climber. 

The eldest son went into the military (as an officer, having graduated from Beijing university before applying to military academy). Since the story follows real life history, and given the time frame, I suppose he would've been involved in the Sino-Vietnamese conflicts. The second son stayed in university for graduate studies and then later went into politics. The third son went into business.

The eldest son is an honest and dependable military man. He also for the longest time never realized the girl from the family they were close to in the Capital has the hots for him and even followed him into the military as a nurse, despite MC throwing big hints at him about her future daughter in law. Though, that may be due to the fact that he was forced to develop early than his emotional maturation (testing into university at 15, graduating and then applying to the military at ~18, etc.) After a while, though, puberty caught up to him and he got together with the girl. Unfortunately, due to his occupation and the fact the story follows MC, we don't see a lot of him after going off to the army.

The second son looks more like the mom, with a...gentlemanly look I guess. Very polite and well-spoken. He wanted to be an academic and planned to study all the way to PH.D or above. During his post-graduate studies though, he was chased down by his girlfriend, who is the daughter of a politician. Because her none of her brothers went into politics, the girlfriend's dad lured his future son-in-law into going into politics instead, and he found himself to be very well suited to the occupation.

The third son has the most screen time because he always wanted to go into business, and very often gets ordered around by his parents for whatever errand needs doing. He's very extroverted, a creative thinker, great at socials, and responsible in terms of handling business and relatives. He likes to joke around with his mom, before being put into his place by his dad.

MC always prepared to leave by testing into university when the college entrance exams were resumed in '77. She also made her eldest son study alongside her. They got top and second score for the county, and directly placed into Beijing University. MC studied English as her major, and then graduated early (one of the faculty had to leave and the university wanted her to place him), and also bought a place to live through connections. At that point, she was able to get the university to help her transfer the...residency paperwork...of her husband and other two children to the capital, and they were able to move in with her.

Later on, as they built up money, property, and connections, they also slowly brought other more distant family members to the capital and transfer their residency over: First the ML's parents, and then various promising nephews and nieces.

The male and female leads of the novel that MC transmigrated to don't show up for a long time, because they are peers of her children rather than herself. I think later the original male lead shows up as a friend or classmate of either the eldest or second son. MC decides he's not a problem, since her kids are not going to become criminals. She was concerned about her third son falling for the original female lead, and thus made up something about a fortune teller predicting the third son cannot marry someone surnamed "Zhong". Then later, when the original female lead shows up, MC quickly match-makes between her and the OML, so that her son never has a chance to try getting with her. 

Just wondering, how did the Zhou family react about Liu Ni in terms of her “reborn” behavior? 

Finished MTLing... great novel took me three whole days to completely read, everything was explained not many loopholes

Edit:  I re-read this story again, later for my favorite scenes... but some lines really cause my BP to shoot high... like MC really doesn't know how to live, she is a spendthrift and takes care of everyone and yet doesn't know how to live?? Pigs are fat, have lots of meat and oil production but only downside is they eat a lot, so you want best of everything with nil payment?? also for at least two autumn harvest there were still 7 years left till university entry exams (but it might be my counting mistake)... Sometimes people views still caused me to be like 

I'd like to ask if Er Ni's husband, Wang Yuan ever cheats? Cuz it was implied that there was a woman in their factory trying to dress up and wanted to become his mistress. It's been bugging me 

Same, this story made me realize that I crave the back to the past slice of life type of story, but I hardly see novels of this type done well enough to my liking. Sure,  I could read the others to kill time and maybe even enjoy reading it sometimes but none of them are even close to the quality of this novel.

In the other novels of the same type I read, some of the major things that I don't like are either:
the MCs being to white lotus/holy mother like to everyone including her enemies who want to harm hersome ML's personality annoys me (Too much of a mama's boy even when his family treats his and MC's little family as shit or "too friendly" (would it kill him to stay away or say no from the homewrecker) and forgiving to the fake white lotus childhood sweetheart /ex/ other female flies hanging off ML.Or I just don't like the family or the people around the MC much because they spend too much over the top negativity in the air that it looks cartoonishly evil.Others rushed the story too much that you won't feel attached to the characters.Small things that I really love about this novel that only a few novels have are:
MC and ML's type of personality [especially MC's]realistic and lovable childrenA sense of progression over the years [you can clearly feel that everyone is slowly changing over time and growing up, especially all of the Zhou children (from crawling as a toddler to having their own family,  I feel so nostalgic reading this story)]. This is not just a story of MC but the story of the whole Zhou clan that is influenced by MC.Space powers introduced and used right (so happy this novel did not add cultivation and pill making in the space power MC got).Some people might think that this story is  too long and boring but I think it's still too short. My heart is not ready for closure yet.  They could have added more extras in the perspective of other people in the family or outsiders and people MC doesn't like. Or shown in detail the process of Sanwa meeting his wife and her family, courting to marriage which his older brothers got, then more description of their married life with children. 

I never expected for Lin Qinghe to die first before Zhou Qingbai. I thought there will be a touching scene from Qinghe. well they were spreading dog food in front of their children in so many years but Qinghe wasn't that type. In the end, Qingbai took the last scene. So unexpected and satisfying. 

So basically I am at Chapter 151, where the MC third LIN BROTHER finally had the courage and money (lent by the MC) to move out of old Lin family joint house. He was being bullied because his wife had three daughters already with no son, and so the Lin Family deemed him as useless.
Spoiler: Not Chapter 151Oh if anybody was wondering, ML finally found out that MC was ligated, he was angry at first and frustrated but MC justified that she had three sons already and before she want in love with him, but later when ML told her he wanted a daughter she was full of regret. Yada Yada, basically MC acted as a victim and made ML feel bad that he wasnt with her back then, ML cant win her in an argument at all hahhahhahha and just accepted it. She did propose a divorce (the kids will stay with ML) but ML is like NO, as long as she is with her, its enough. aWWWW THE ML IS WHIPPED 

thanks for the spoiler. This reminded me of the death of my grandfather and grandmother both knew they were going to die and said goodbye to everyone and went to sleep. 

It’s been a awhile since I MTL it, but no he doesn’t. 

She does have money to backup the lifestyle so not complaining here and that's how she lived before and knew it was better to live that way for the health of the kids so it's acceptable for me.
As for the Uni entrance, I agree she did prepare very very early. I did think though she may want to study in secret however later she thought  she can't hid it long to her husband and eventually revealed herself or perhaps that was her first time studying english adding her past life and wanted to be competitive so she studied that early. It was never explain in the novel iirc.