Chapter 1: Transmigrated into a Melodrama

After finishing her college entrance exams, Jiang Wanwan was ready to celebrate. Her parents, busy with work, returned the long-confiscated phone to her and promptly sent her to live with her grandmother, who lived alone in their hometown county.

Grandma Jiang had been widowed young, and after raising her son and daughter, she began to enjoy her golden years. Though her son offered to have her live with them in the provincial capital many times, she always refused. The old woman was quite a free spirit; she had no desire to meddle in her children’s lives and preferred they didn’t meddle in hers, either.

Not long after arriving, with no one to rein her in, Jiang Wanwan fell into a nocturnal routine. She’d spend her nights binge-watching shows, shopping online, and playing games, then sleep all day. Occasionally, she’d join her grandmother for a walk in the park or watch TV with her after dinner.

Lately, she’d been watching a period melodrama with her grandma. The entire forty-plus episode series revolved around the theme of “suffering.” The female lead was as withered and miserable as a cabbage in the dead of winter. The show made Grandma Jiang cry, but it only made Jiang Wanwan’s heart ache with frustration.

On the night of the finale, Jiang Wanwan watched as the protagonist went bankrupt to treat her ungrateful son’s illness and even took in her good-for-nothing ex-husband after he was released from prison. Jiang Wanwan couldn’t help but curse out loud. She was so angry that she didn’t even feel like playing games that night. Instead, she tossed and turned in bed, replaying the protagonist’s miserable life story in her mind.

Finally, she couldn’t take it anymore. She sat up, grabbed her phone, and was about to vent to a friend when a sharp pain seized her chest. Her vision went black, and she lost consciousness. When she woke up again, she had become Jiang Huiwan, the very protagonist whose suffering had angered her to death.

After absorbing the memories of the original body, Jiang Wanwan felt completely unhinged. She stared blankly as the original owner’s mother, Jiang Lan, scolded her for faking an illness. She watched her stepsister, Xu Huirong, taunt and gloat in front of her… Though their faces were different from the actors on TV, their personalities were identical. As they called out “Jiang Huiwan” with a variety of vivid expressions, she slowly came to the shocking realization that she had truly transmigrated into the melodrama’s female lead.

She had worked so hard to get through her college entrance exams and was on the brink of a bright future, only to transmigrate because of a terrible TV show? And her parents, who had worked tirelessly to build a successful life, now faced the tragedy of losing their only daughter. The loss of their millions was a minor issue; the real problem was that without Jiang Wanwan as a link, her parents’ already fragile marriage would surely fall apart.

She started to worry if her grandmother would be scared by her corpse, if her friends and classmates would be sad to hear of her sudden death. After dwelling on these thoughts for a while, she finally accepted the harsh reality of her transmigration.

But then her eyes fell on the calendar on the wall, where a bright red “Saturday, August 22” was circled, and she froze.

Wait! In the original owner’s memory, she had graduated from high school on the fifth of last month and had been forced by Jiang Lan to sign up for the “going to the countryside” program on the 17th. But according to both the officer at the office and the show’s plot, everyone was to be sent to the countryside on September 20th. That meant she had less than a month before she had to go! And Jiang Huiwan’s bitter and tragic life had all started with that trip.

Although the show’s first episode began after the protagonist, Jiang Huiwan, had already arrived in the countryside, the show had briefly explained her background. She was born in a lane house in Shanghai to college-educated parents. When she was three, her father disappeared. Her mother, Jiang Lan, searched for him in vain and then took her back to their hometown county, where she worked as a financial officer at the local textile factory. Two years later, a matchmaker introduced Jiang Lan to a man who had come to the factory to provide technical assistance…

…her step-father, Xu Weishan, a mechanical engineer from the city. They married soon after, and Jiang Huiwan and her mother moved into the city’s machinery factory housing complex.

Xu Weishan had a daughter, Xu Huirong, who was a year older than Jiang Huiwan. Having lost her mother shortly after birth, the girl was spoiled by her relatives and developed a rather willful personality. Fortunately, her stepfather was always fair and just, always siding with what was right, not with his own kin. Though spoiled, Xu Huirong rarely got her way.

Her mother, Jiang Lan, on the other hand, was the complete opposite. Perhaps it was Jiang Huiwan’s face, which looked more and more like her birth father’s, that irritated her. Jiang Lan poured all the hatred and resentment she felt toward her first husband for abandoning her and their daughter onto Jiang Huiwan. As an educated woman, she never physically abused her daughter, but she practiced emotional coldness—strict demands, constant scolding, and outright neglect. This treatment worsened when Jiang Huiwan’s younger brother, Xu Huipeng, was born when she was eight.

Under her mother’s years of coldness, Jiang Huiwan gradually developed a cautious, self-sacrificing personality, which would lay the groundwork for her tragic life.

In 1970, seventeen-year-old Jiang Huiwan graduated from high school. Even with her thick bangs covering half her face and her habit of keeping her head down and shoulders hunched, her striking looks couldn’t be hidden. As a result, she was constantly harassed by young men from the factory. The worst of them was the factory director’s youngest son, the local troublemaker. This “young master” once swindled his stepmother’s country relatives out of 3,000 yuan by promising them jobs, earning him the infamous nickname “Shen Sanqian” (“Shen Three-Thousand”).

Shen Sanqian had taken an interest in Jiang Huiwan, and he would block her path every few days or loiter outside the Xu family’s home, whistling at her. When Xu Weishan complained to the factory director, it was no use. The next day, Shen Sanqian saw Xu Weishan at his front door and called out, “Father-in-law!” The greeting enraged the normally good-tempered man, turning his face bright red.

Jiang Lan loathed Shen Sanqian. She was terrified her daughter’s beauty would attract the notorious hooligan and tarnish the Xu family’s reputation. So, she ordered Jiang Huiwan to sign up to go to the countryside. Jiang Lan thought this was a perfect plan: her daughter would escape the troublemaker, and she would no longer have to see her daughter’s face, which was a constant reminder of the man she hated.

Jiang Huiwan was sent to the desolate countryside of the Great Northern Wilderness. The farm work was exhausting and the living conditions were tough. To make things worse, the village head’s son, seeing how pretty she was, constantly made passes at her. One day, he even pinned her down in a cornfield, attempting to assault her. Luckily, the male lead, Qi Hu, who was home visiting his family, happened to pass by and saved her.

To repay his kindness, Jiang Huiwan began to look after Qi Hu’s widowed mother. Every time Qi Hu came home, his mother would praise the young woman from the city, and the two began to see more and more of each other. They eventually fell in love and were on the verge of getting married.

But then Hu Xiuxiu, the second female lead, a girl from the same sent-down youth group, found out that Qi Hu was now a company commander in the army and that his wife could be transferred to live with him and be given a job. Her jealousy kicked in, and she framed Jiang Huiwan, making it look as though she was caught in bed with a poor, good-for-nothing villager named Qi Feng. Hu Xiuxiu then led the entire village to “catch them in the act,” forcing Jiang Huiwan to marry him.

Hu Xiuxiu got what she wanted and married a heartbroken Qi Hu, escaping the hard life of farming and going to live with him in the military. Meanwhile, Jiang Huiwan married Qi Feng, working herself to the bone doing all the household chores while her lazy, unreliable husband did nothing. She had to go out and earn work points herself to survive. After giving birth to two daughters and a son, she had to support them all. When the college entrance exams were reinstated, the Qi family, knowing Jiang Huiwan was soft-hearted, used her children to trap her, and she predictably gave up her chance at a better life for them.

…the opportunity to take the college entrance exam and return to the city.

After a decade and a half of hard work, just as her life was finally looking up, her husband became rich from his business ventures and promptly cheated on her and demanded a divorce. Her son, choosing a more comfortable life, went with his father and started calling his mistress “Mom.” Fortunately, her two sensible daughters were her rock, giving her the strength to carry on. Gritting her teeth, she moved to the city to work and support her daughters’ education, burying herself in her work.

In the city, she reunited with her former family, friends, and lover. Her mother, ashamed that she had married a low-life in the countryside, pretended not to see her when they crossed paths. Her stepsister, Xu Huirong, was living a life of luxury after marrying her stepfather’s student, and she was as arrogant as ever. Her old friends looked at her with pity and told her that Shen Sanqian, the very person who had pursued her and been the reason for her being sent away, had died in a fire two years after she left, sacrificing himself to protect the factory’s property.

And then there was her former love, Qi Hu. He was now a security guard at a small clothing factory, walking with a limp. He had been honorably discharged due to his injuries, and soon after, Hu Xiuxiu divorced him. They had no children, and Hu Xiuxiu took all of his retirement money, claiming it was for “lost youth.”

Finally, the misunderstanding between the saintly protagonist and the kind-hearted male lead was resolved, and they rekindled their romance. They opened a small restaurant together and, after saving up for a few years, were about to buy the storefront. That’s when her ungrateful son showed up at their door. Qi Feng had been imprisoned for counterfeiting, his mistress had run off with their money, and their unlucky son had a disease and needed a kidney transplant. He came to his birth mother for money and a donor. The protagonist used all their savings to pay for his treatment and even convinced her eldest daughter to donate a kidney. A few years later, her scumbag ex-husband was released from prison with nowhere to go, and the protagonist and male lead took him in. The story was forcefully given a “happy” ending.

As Jiang Wanwan replayed the plot in her mind, she felt her anger flare up again. This is ridiculous! I’d send a box of razor blades to the screenwriter if I hadn’t transmigrated. What kind of terrible plot is this?!

Since Jiang Huiwan’s misery began with being sent to the countryside, Jiang Wanwan reasoned, then she simply wouldn’t go! Even if life in the countryside were simple and peaceful, she still had seven years until the college entrance exams were reinstated. The thought of seven years of hard labor made her head throb. But she had already signed up, and there was no going back. Besides, in this era, everything was politicized; she couldn’t risk having some crime pinned on her.

While she was fretting, she heard a knock at the door. She tried to ignore it, but the knocking grew louder and more insistent, as if the person on the other side would break the door down if she didn’t open it. Remembering her family was either at work or school, Jiang Wanwan worried it might be an emergency and finally went to open the door. The Xu family’s courtyard gate was old and always made a long, drawn-out creak when opened. In the two days she had been there, the creak always announced either an old woman borrowing some scallions or an old, bald uncle who needed to speak to her stepfather.

This time, after the long creak, the person who looked up had a handsome face with a high nose, deep-set eyes, and rosy lips. Jiang Wanwan, who considered herself an expert on handsome men after years of celebrity crushes, was completely stunned. She tried to recover, telling herself it was just a man. Of course, a man in person would be different from one on a screen; it was only natural to be a little shocked.

Before she could collect herself, the “breathing” young man flashed a brilliant smile that felt like a punch to the heart. It made her skip a beat. Then, he tossed a paper-wrapped package at her, turned around, and rode off on his bicycle.

Dazed, Jiang Wanwan held the package up and took a sniff. It smelled like roast chicken… Wait a minute. She stuck her head out the gate, watching the young man ride away, a bewildered look on her face.

“Hey, wait, who are you, handsome?” she muttered to herself.