Chapter One: In 1979, I Wrote "The Barn"

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At half past nine in the evening, the old central air conditioner in the office was buzzing noisily.

Xu Chengjun stared at the computer screen.

He had just created a new chapter in the Writer’s Assistant.

The ashtray was piled with cigarette butts like a little mountain, and a red mark from a burn scarred the web of his left hand.

Back in his days burning the midnight oil at the district government office drafting speeches, it was cigarettes that kept him awake.

“Damn it, stuck again.”

He rubbed his throbbing temples. On the desk still lay a stack of unfinished “Government Work Report” compilations.

Thirty-five years old, a top student with a BA and MA from Jinan University’s Chinese Language and Literature program.

He had served eight years as a civil servant in a provincial department somewhere in the southwest, climbing from a fourth-ranked to a first-ranked main staffer.

Outsiders thought it a stable and respectable life, but only he knew that the tiny flame of literature in his chest was nearly extinguished by the endless deluge of official documents.

For five years, he’d written as an amateur on Qidian, under the pen name “Chu Feng.”

On his bookshelf lay three manuscripts of serious literature without publishing contracts, and two barely-serial historical novels.

Readers always said his works were “too proper,” “like reading a report.”

Editors advised him too: “Brother Xu, loosen up. Online fiction needs to hit the pleasure points.”

He understood, of course.

But after seven years steeped in Chinese studies and eight years wrestling in the world of officialese, there remained a stubborn conviction in his bones—“literature as a vehicle for truth.”

He dared not fabricate history, yet writing about reality risked touching forbidden zones.

The result was mediocrity—neither high nor low, making him the most awkward “insider writer” on the platform.

“One last try.”

Xu Chengjun opened a new document and typed the title: “My Era, 1979!”

This time, he resolved to compromise—combining the policy sensitivity gained from his civil service career, the textual mastery from his Chinese studies, and the thrill points of online fiction.

He would write about a time-traveling protagonist with policy acumen and scholarly knowledge, breaking new ground in 1979 with the power of words.

He had revised the opening seven times, just setting up the background for the “Household Contract Responsibility System,” when suddenly a peal of thunder rolled outside the window.

A torrential rain lashed the glass, the computer screen flickered violently, and the words in the document began to distort.

He reached out to press the power button, but just as his fingertip brushed the metal case, a violent current shot through his body.

His last conscious thought lingered on the automatic save prompt.

“Your document ‘My Era, 1979!’ has been saved.”

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“Chengjun! Chengjun, wake up!”

A rough palm slapped his face, reeking of straw and earth.

Xu Chengjun struggled to open his eyes, but the familiar white walls and filing cabinets were nowhere to be seen.

Above him was a thatched roof leaking starlight, a few yellowed stalks of straw swaying gently in the wind.

“Water…water…”

His throat felt scraped raw, as if he’d swallowed sandpaper. He tried to sit up.

His bones ached as if they’d been dismantled and reassembled; his arms bore several fine scratches.

“Here, here!”

A crisp girl’s voice rang out, and a coarse porcelain bowl was brought to his lips.

Cool water tinged with iron slid down his throat, sending a chill through him but clearing his vision.

Before him was a sun-darkened girl’s face, hair braided in two thick plaits, her faded floral shirt frayed at the cuffs.

Behind her, a faded slogan—“Learn from Dazhai in Agriculture”—was pasted on the mud-brick wall.

In the corner, half a sack of sweet potatoes was piled; dried chilies and corn cobs hung from the rafters.

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This was not his office!

“Brother Chengjun, you’re finally awake!”

The girl’s eyes were red-rimmed, her braids swaying gently as she spoke.

“Yesterday, you were weeding in the wheat field. The sky suddenly grew stuffy. When you stood up, you wobbled and collapsed. You scared us half to death!”

“The barefoot doctor from the production team came to see you. He said you’d been working too hard for work points—up before dawn every day, and your health couldn’t keep up. Plus, the weather suddenly got hot. He said you must rest for three days, no more toughing it out.”

Collapsed in the wheat field?

Production team?

Barefoot doctor?

Countless unfamiliar fragments of memory surged into his mind, crashing against the trajectory of his thirty-five years.

Xu Chengjun, an educated youth sent to the countryside in 1977, parents both teachers at the county middle school.

And yet, he himself had entered Jinan University in 2008, joined the civil service in 2015, and by 2024 was still agonizing over his transition to online fiction.

The two “Xu Chengjuns” wrestled for dominance in his mind, finally settling on a single, crystal-clear year.

“Now…what…what year is it?”

He asked hoarsely, his voice trembling even to his own ears.

“Brother Chengjun, are you addled from the fever? In half a month, we’ll be harvesting the wheat!”

“The granary’s already been cleared out, just waiting for the new wheat to be cut, sun-dried, and stored.”

The granary?

Xu Chengjun followed the girl’s gaze out the window.

In the night, he could faintly make out a mud-brick granary not far off, its black silhouette hunched like an old ox on the ground.

1979!

Xu Chengjun’s heart thudded as if struck by a heavy hammer.

The year he’d pored over in “Government Work Reports,” the pivotal moment etched into his memory from “A History of Contemporary Chinese Literature,” the very era he’d just written the opening lines for in “My Era, 1979!”

Had he really traveled through time?

Lying on the creaking wooden bed, Xu Chengjun took two hours to sort through his tangled thoughts.

A youth collapsed in the fields, now occupied by a soul from forty-four years in the future.

Outside, the team leader’s whistle blew, mingled with villagers’ laughter and the distant chug of a tractor.

These vivid sounds, more real than any historical record, proved this was no dream.

He struggled out of bed and walked to the cracked mud wall. By the faint dawn seeping through the broken window lattice, he examined himself.

In the tin mirror, the reflection was tall and thin, with a pale, wheat-hued face and scholarly features—yet fresher, more naive than he remembered.

This was Xu Chengjun at twenty, an educated youth trapped in the yellow earth.

And within his soul were seven years’ refinement in Jinan University’s Chinese Department, and worldly wisdom honed by eight years as a civil servant.

“Guess I…come with my own cheat code?” He smirked wryly.

In his previous life, he’d always mocked the “protagonist halo” in time travel stories. Who would have thought that when his turn came, the heavens would really hand him a plug-in?

He had memories of the next forty years.

Seven years of literary aesthetics and tactile command of language.

The policy sensitivity wrought by administrative experience.

In this era, there was a stage for “pink-collars” to stir up the winds and clouds!

His fingers unconsciously tapped the mud wall, as clear lines of thought surfaced in his mind.

In 1979, the submission address for “Harvest” magazine was on Julu Road in Shanghai;

The Fourth National Congress of Literary and Art Workers would convene at year’s end;

Lu Yao’s “Life” would not be published for another three years…

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These facts, once scribbled in his study notes, now seemed engraved in his DNA.

He understood the literary rules of this era.

He knew that “Scar Literature” was sweeping the literary world, and also which topics were landmines.

He was keenly aware that the spring breeze of ideological emancipation had arrived, and even more so how to find breakthroughs within the framework.

“Perhaps…”

Xu Chengjun’s heart pounded, his palms growing slick with sweat.

All those suppressed urges for expression in his official writing, all those literary obsessions compromised in online fiction, all those story structures conceived in the dead of night…

Was he truly meant to realize them in this golden age, with this young body?

“Brother Chengjun, time for lunch!”

Outside, Xinghua’s voice called, thick with the local accent.

Xu Chengjun opened the door. The May sunlight was dazzling; before him stretched endless fields of wheat.

Waves of grain rose and fell in the wind.

On the distant ridge, a red flag bore the slogan “Learn from Dazhai in Agriculture.”

A few villagers in straw hats were fertilizing the crops, their shouts and the clinking of hoes against earth composing the simplest symphony.

This was rural Anhui in 1979.

The spark of the Household Contract Responsibility System was quietly germinating in the soil.

New literary shoots were tentatively pushing through in the breeze of liberation.

And he stood in the folds of history, the sharpest weapon in hand.

“What’s for lunch?”

He took the coarse porcelain bowl Xinghua offered—inside were sweet potatoes and pickled vegetables, the steaming aroma making his stomach growl.

“Steamed sweet potatoes at the youth point today. Brother Zhao Gang saved two big ones just for you.”

Xu Chengjun’s grip tightened around the sweet potato, the burning heat instantly bringing him into focus.

This wasn’t a world where words could be wielded with abandon; here, writing must pierce the fog, but never set oneself aflame.

He looked down at the thin gruel swirling in his bowl, the reflection revealing a young face with resolute eyes.

Suddenly, the structure of his story became clear—not a haphazard pile of online tropes, but something with flesh and soul.

He would start with that pitch-black granary.

Write about the ring of keys hanging behind the granary door.

Describe the marks on the wall, plastered over with mud then scratched open again, tell how the scattered wheat grains sprouted in the wind.

“Xinghua.”

Xu Chengjun raised his head, his eyes shining with an unprecedented light.

“Fetch me a pen—I want to write something.”

The wind swept through the wheat field, rustling like the turning of an era’s page.

He recalled helping the storekeeper dry grain yesterday, how the jujube-wood scale for weighing public grain always tipped toward “more for the collective.”

The weight bobbed back and forth, as if testing the weight of people’s hearts.

He would call it “The Granary.”

Xu Chengjun bit into the sweet potato, a stream of gentle sweetness flooding his body.

He knew that his new life began with this bowl of sweet potato porridge.

And the stories of this era would once again flow from his pen.