My 1979

My 1979 is a long-form urban rebirth novel by the online author Zhengjinlund Lianghuamao. Serialized on Qidian from June 2016 and now completed, it follows Li He, a man in his fifties with a settled life, who unexpectedly returns to 1979—back to the summer when he was eighteen and had just finished the college entrance exam, once again facing a poor and deeply conflicted family. His father, Li Zhaokun, is idle and unreliable; his mother, Wang Yulan, borrows money everywhere to cover her children’s school fees; and the five children in the household are gaunt and malnourished, with dropout, marriage, and daily survival pressing down on them one after another. Li He first accumulates his “first pot of gold” through rural money-making methods such as catching and selling rice-field eels, then seizes the restored college entrance exam to pursue education and step onto a larger stage. From there he starts with repair work and reselling home appliances, moves into electronic watches, clothing, and other trades, and struggles to build up capital during the era of dual-track pricing and market shortages. As reform and opening up advance, he ventures into foreign trade, finance, and other fields, growing step by step from a rural youth into an entrepreneur navigating the ups and downs of business. The book centers on the changing fate of a family, weaving in period details such as work points, the college entrance exam, ration coupons, and supply and marketing cooperatives, embedding individual striving within the larger background of the transition from a planned economy to a market economy and portraying the struggles, opportunities, and choices of an ordinary generation amid the tides of the times.