Rebirth 1986

Rebirth 1986 is a modern romance web novel by Yuexia Wumeiren, a writer under China Literature. Serialized on Qidian from 2014 to 2015 and now complete, it runs about 1.086 million Chinese characters and is the first book in the author's Rebirth Trilogy. At the opening, the heroine An Qing, against her family's objections, had insisted on marrying the man she loved. But relatives on her husband's side sowed discord and fanned misunderstandings between the couple, until husband and wife became strangers to each other. She spent her later years in misery and died in a natural disaster. Before she closed her eyes, she heard the thunder of a collapsing house, saw her young daughter's heartbroken wails, and felt the man she had resented all her life hold her tight as they were crushed together beneath the rubble. When she opens her eyes again, she is back in 1986, in the first days of her marriage to that man. Outside is a boisterous wedding banquet; inside hang gaudy red double-happiness characters. Her husband, outwardly cold but warm at heart, still means his vows. Standing between the memories of two lives, An Qing faces a choice: leave early and walk away, or stay and start over with this man, and hold on to the happiness that should have been hers. Set against small-town life in the 1980s, the novel depicts meddling in-laws, social obligations, the drudgery of setting up a household and making a living, and a woman who, carrying the regrets of a previous life, reexamines her marriage and herself.