short series

80s Gaokao Journey: I Built a Factory with My Skills

share time: 2025-11-30 12:33:05

In a small Jiangnan town in 1983, 18-year-old Su Xiaomei crouched by her family's fish stall in the market, holding a crumpled high school textbook and reciting English words — her father scolded her for "wasting money on college as a girl" and forced her to drop out to marry a carpenter from the neighboring village; her mother wiped tears while hiding textbooks for her, too afraid to defy her father. To earn tuition, she woke up at 4 a.m. to help carry fish to the market, ate cold steamed buns at noon while listening to English lessons on the radio, and accidentally found that scrap appliance parts could be assembled into flashlights for sale. Between the urgency of the college entrance exam countdown, the chaos of her booming small business, and the gossip of "being unprofessional" from neighbors, Su had to hold onto her dream of going to college while turning her small side hustle into a factory that could support her family. When she received a bulk order the day before the exam, and both the college admission notice and the factory business license were placed in front of her on the result day, could she grasp both the ideal of youth and the responsibility of life?

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