The Dream Era

The Dream Era is an urban rebirth novel by the web author Jun Xiucai, serialized on Qidian Chinese Network. It runs over three thousand chapters, is complete, and has not yet been formally published in print. The story opens with Xiao Qi, freshly graduated with a doctorate from the United States, injured in Yellowstone (Grand Canyon) National Park while saving a little girl from nearly falling off a cliff. When he wakes, he finds himself back eight years earlier, in 2005, once again a seventeen- or eighteen-year-old high school senior about to face the college entrance exam. Armed with the knowledge and memories of his previous life, Xiao Qi sets about making up for the regrets and unresolved feelings of his youth while building his first capital from scratch and entering the world of business. He must contend not only with changing his own fate but also with the global mobile phone industry's great reshuffling that began in 2005: Nokia, Motorola, HTC, Samsung, and Apple appear in turn; feature phones give way to smartphones; openness and closure, conservatism and innovation collide; and undercurrents stir in a market worth trillions. At the same time, he hopes to use his abilities to win greater room for his upright, mild-mannered father, whose official career has not gone smoothly, and to properly manage his emotional relationships with the women around him. The book weaves together family, romance, officialdom, and business, telling how a reborn man builds a fortune from nothing amid the surging tides of the era, rises to the top of the industrial chain, and keeps his conscience and his bottom line.