In the 1960s: A Vicious, Alluring Beauty Is Forcibly Claimed - Reviews

I need to talk about Qin Yunxi and Qin Sang because holy shit these two are something else. I went in expecting a generic revenge story but what I got was a mother-daughter duo so ruthlessly pragmatic it actually made me sit up straight. The way the text describes Qin Yunxi's worldview is chilling in its honesty: "If they did, she would make an effort to maintain the relationship. If not, she would treat them coldly." And men? "Men were replaceable." She divorced her husband right before he got reported, remarried a factory director, and moved her daughter across the country—all within months. No guilt, no hesitation. Just cold calculation. But here's what got me: Qin Sang is literally her clone. When her step-sister Bai Tingting calls her "baggage," Sang Sang doesn't even flinch. She's already plotting how to make the girl pay. And that scene where she hides behind Bai Zhixin so Tingting slaps him instead? Chef's kiss. Absolutely diabolical. "Qin Sang took after her mother—selfish, self-serving, cold, and even more so." This line hit me like a truck. The author isn't hiding anything about these characters. They know exactly who they are. What I love most is their relationship with each other. There's no sappy mother-daughter bonding here. Instead, there's this unspoken understanding—like they're partners in crime who don't need to say it out loud. When Sang Sang pretends to have no appetite but secretly eats pastries in her room? Her mother knows. And she doesn't care. That's their love language. The Bai family dynamics are equally fascinating. Bai Anrong is so wrapped up in his fantasy about Qin Yunxi being his "white moonlight" that he can't see the manipulation happening right in front of him. Meanwhile, Bai Zhixin is this awkward teenager who actually has a conscience—he defends Sang Sang and gets slapped for it. I kind of rooted for him even though he's clearly being played. And Bai Tingting? She's the perfect antagonist because she's so openly hateful that you can't help but want her to get what's coming to her. But then the author drops that bomb about her not being the Bai family's biological child, and suddenly everything shifts. Karma for calling Sang Sang "baggage"—she herself is the illegitimate one. I laughed out loud.

Okay so I started reading this at 10pm and it is now 2am and I have read seven chapters and I need to talk about the pacing because the author is a menace. Chapter 1 establishes the world, the characters, and the central conflict in what feels like three pages. We get the gossiping women at the well, we meet Qin Yunxi and Sang Sang, we learn about the divorce and remarriage, and we're already heading toward the family visit. No wasted words. No filler. Just pure forward momentum. The transition from Chapter 1 to Chapter 2 is seamless. One moment they're arriving at the Bai family home, the next we're in the middle of the conflict with Bai Tingting. The author doesn't slow down to explain everything—she drops you right into the drama and lets you figure it out as you go. This is how you keep a reader hooked. But what really impressed me is how the author controls tension. The scene with Bai Tingting bullying Sang Sang builds slowly—insult by insult, escalation by escalation—until you're practically holding your breath. Then Sang Sang turns the tables, and the slap lands, and the head injury happens, and suddenly the whole family is in chaos. All of this unfolds in real time, and the pacing makes it feel even more intense. "Ahhh! Help! Murder! I'm going to die!" Bai Tingting's hysterical wailing is both terrifying and darkly comedic. The author knows exactly when to let the scene breathe and when to speed it up. The revelation in Chapter 3 about Bai Tingting not being the biological child is the kind of cliffhanger that makes you immediately click to the next chapter. It's not just a plot twist—it recontextualizes everything that came before. Every insult, every judgment, every moment of superiority from the Bai family suddenly has a new meaning. The chapter endings are particularly well-crafted. Chapter 2 ends with Sang Sang secretly eating pastries while pretending to be sick—a perfect moment of dark humor that undercuts the drama. Chapter 3 ends with Sang Sang's internal monologue about revenge, which sets up the next phase of the story while giving us a glimpse into her calculating mind. There's one moment where I wanted the author to slow down—when Qin Yunxi is explaining her reasoning for divorcing Han Xiaosheng. It's important backstory, but it comes in a big block of exposition. However, the author saves it by keeping it brief and ending with Sang Sang's pragmatic agreement, which keeps the scene moving. Overall? The pacing is relentless in the best way. Every chapter ends with a hook, every scene advances the plot or develops character, and there's zero fat. I'm already wondering if the next batch will maintain this energy.

Let's talk about Sang Sang's voice because it is DELICIOUS. The dialogue in this book is sharp and each character has a distinct way of speaking. Sang Sang's voice is the star of the show. She switches registers like a pro—sweet and coquettish with the sales clerk, terrified and whimpering in front of the armed men, cold and dismissive with her classmates, and manipulative with Bai Zhixin. Each mode feels completely natural because it's rooted in her motivation. With the sales clerk, she's all 'Thank you, Sister Wang. You look just like an older sister—I won't call you aunt!' The flattery is so smooth it's almost comical. And the clerk eats it up: 'You've got such a sweet mouth, little girl.' This exchange tells us everything about Sang Sang's character in just a few lines. With the armed men, her voice shifts to performative vulnerability: 'Ah! Mister, what are you doing? My face is dirty... You're bullying me! I'm going to tell my dad when I get home, wuu…' The onomatopoeia of her crying is almost cartoonish, but that's the point—she's putting on a show and it's a GOOD show. With Yuan Yuan, she's brutally cold: 'Why are you making noise in front of my seat? It's break time—I want to rest. Move along.' No pretense, no sweetness. Just pure dismissal. And the narrative voice itself is wonderful—wry, observant, with a dry humor that matches Sang Sang's own personality. Lines like 'In all his twenty-plus years, this was the first time Pei Che had been outplayed in the gutter' have this perfect deadpan quality. The narrator isn't just telling us what happened; they're commenting on it with a raised eyebrow. Bai Zhixin's dialogue is simpler, more straightforward, which contrasts nicely with Sang Sang's verbal agility. He's the kind of guy who says exactly what he means and has no idea he's being played.

There's a line at the very beginning that's been stuck in my head: 'only the one who drinks the water knows whether it's warm or cold.' This feels like the key to the whole story. Sang Sang and her mother have left Shanghai for Harbin—a colder place, both literally and socially. The cold is a recurring motif. Qin Yunxi worries about winter clothing, about wool coats not being enough. But the cold is also metaphorical. Harbin is a place where no one knows their past, where they can reinvent themselves. Survival here requires a different kind of warmth—social warmth, the kind Sang Sang generates through charm and calculation. The department store scene is rich with symbolism about scarcity and value. Fabric coupons, meat coupons, yarn coupons—everything is rationed, everything has a price. Sang Sang understands this better than anyone. She knows that a kind word to a clerk could mean better goods later. In a world where resources are limited, social capital becomes currency. Then there's the alley scene, which flips the whole theme on its head. Here, the currency isn't coupons or charm—it's violence. Pei Che represents a different kind of survival, one that's brutal and immediate. He's injured, hunted, and still manages to threaten a fifteen-year-old girl. But she turns the tables. Her kick to his wound is symbolic: the seemingly weak overpowering the strong, the civilian surviving in a world of guns and spies. The headscarf is another symbol I can't stop thinking about. Sang Sang wraps it around her face to hide her beauty—her most valuable asset—from the men searching for Pei Che. She literally covers up her advantage to survive. And then she uses the same scarf to bandage (and tighten) Pei Che's wound, turning her protection into a weapon. The chocolate Yuan Yuan offers at the end feels like a symbol of innocence and genuine kindness in a world where everything is transactional. Sang Sang's momentary sadness when she thinks of her father buying those expensive snacks in Shanghai suggests she still remembers a time before survival became her default mode. But how long will that last?

The setting in this book is doing so much heavy lifting and I'm here for it. Chapter 1 opens with this incredibly vivid scene of middle-aged women in "dark, coarse cloth clothes" gathered around a communal well, washing laundry and gossiping. You can literally feel the humidity, hear the splashing water, see the faded colors of everyone's outfits. The author doesn't need fancy descriptions—just the right details and the world comes alive. "The weather was unusually cool for summer, easing the intense heat of the past few days." This one line tells you so much about the time period. We're in 1963 China, during what must have been a difficult era, and the weather itself feels like a character—oppressive heat broken by rare moments of relief. The contrast between Shanghai and Harbin is subtle but powerful. Shanghai is where Qin Yunxi and Sang Sang came from—the place of their former comfort, their father's research institute, the state-run restaurants where they could afford meat dishes. Harbin is the new world, the factory quarters, the steel factory that represents Bai Anrong's status but also the beginning of their complicated new life. The Bai family home is described through Sang Sang's eyes, and it's fascinating how she assesses everything. The building blocks, the table corners, the way people position themselves in rooms—it's all filtered through this calculating fourteen-year-old's perspective. The setting becomes a chessboard. "Bai Anhua also worked as a director, but at a steel factory, where the position and status were far better than those of the textile factory." This single sentence establishes the entire social hierarchy of this world. Steel factory director > textile factory director. It's a small detail but it tells you everything about where people stand and why marriages are arranged the way they are. The communal well scene is particularly brilliant because it establishes the gossip network that will likely follow Qin Yunxi and Sang Sang throughout the story. In a close-knit factory community, reputation is everything—and these women are already judging them before they even cross the threshold. I also love how the author uses food as a marker of status and warmth. The three meat dishes—braised pork with vermicelli, sweet-and-sour fried pork, pan-fried hairtail—are described with such specificity that you can almost smell them. For an ordinary family, such a meal would only appear during holidays. This isn't just dinner; it's love, it's sacrifice, it's the kind of thing a mother does when she wants to make up for lost time.

I need to talk about Yuan Yuan and how this character completely won me over. At first, she seems like just the food-obsessed deskmate, right? But the moment Sang Sang offers her the fatty pork... that scene hit me so hard. Yuan Yuan's reaction—her eyes reddening, thinking Qin Sang is as kind as she is beautiful—this is the kind of character moment that makes you realize how much these two have grown together. And then there's Bai Lanlan. God, the author did something brilliant with her. When she sees Sang Sang at that family meal, picking at vegetables while everyone else fights over meat... the inferiority complex just radiates off the page. "She was wearing a white sweater with a black skirt... compared to her own new outfit, it suddenly looked unbearably plain." This is such a raw, honest portrayal of class consciousness and self-worth. Bai Lanlan isn't just a plot device—she's a fully realized person shaped by fifteen years of hardship. But what really got me was Sang Sang herself. "Though Sang Sang was selfish, her heart wasn't made of stone. She did love her father. It was just that… she loved herself even more." This line. This single line tells us everything about her character. She's not a villain—she's just painfully honest about her own nature. And yet she still shares her food, still protects Yuan Yuan, still navigates this bizarre family situation with grace. The dynamic between Sang Sang and Yuan Yuan is honestly one of the most beautiful friendships I've read. Three years of Yuan Yuan doing everything for Sang Sang—running errands, cleaning, washing lunchboxes—and Sang Sang never once taking it for granted. When she tells Yuan Yuan to study harder, it's her way of showing she cares. "Don't you want us to live in the same city?" That's not manipulation—that's love in a language only they understand. And Bai Tingting! The fact that she's still around, that she's been kept and raised alongside her biological sister... the author sets this up perfectly for future conflict. Sang Sang thinks she'll just keep making things difficult for her, but the narration hints that Bai Tingting has changed. I'm dying to see how this rivalry evolves.

The dialogue in this book is sharp enough to draw blood and I'm obsessed. Bai Tingting's voice is immediately recognizable. Every line she speaks is loaded with venom and entitlement: "What are you staring at, you country bumpkin!" "At such a young age, you're already like your mother—using your looks to get by. Shameless!" This girl doesn't just speak; she attacks. And the author never lets her dialogue become one-note—there's a progression from sarcasm to outright rage that feels completely natural. Sang Sang's dialogue is where things get really interesting. On the surface, she's sweet and compliant: "Brother, you're amazing! That building block set is so complicated, and you can still put it together—so impressive!" But the narration immediately undercuts this: "Inside, Sang Sang rolled her eyes. Who would want to learn something so boring?" This gap between what characters say and what they think is the author's superpower. Sang Sang's verbal performance is flawless, and the reader is let in on the joke. We're not just watching her manipulate people—we're complicit in it. When Sang Sang turns the tables on Bai Tingting, her dialogue becomes even more brilliant. "Sister, are you admitting that you lack manners?" she says gently, her tone soft but her words infuriating. This is the kind of line that makes you want to hug the character and also question your moral compass. Qin Yunxi's dialogue is more restrained but no less revealing. Her interaction with her husband is a masterclass in performed femininity: "Brother Anrong, don't… the kids might come out and see." She's playing the shy, modest wife while internally calculating everything. The gap between her words and her thoughts is wider than ever. Bai Zhixin's voice is the most natural of all the characters. He's awkward, flustered, genuinely concerned: "Don't be afraid. If anyone bullies you, I'll beat them up for you." This is a sixteen-year-old boy trying to be brave, and it comes across as completely authentic. The narrative voice itself is worth discussing. It's omniscient but deeply aligned with Sang Sang and Qin Yunxi's perspectives. We get access to their thoughts, their schemes, their private judgments. The author doesn't judge them for being manipulative or cold—we're invited to see the world through their eyes and understand their choices. "Life was her own—after all," ends Chapter 3 mid-sentence, trailing off into Sang Sang's internal monologue. This fragmented, stream-of-consciousness style gives the narration a raw, immediate quality that fits perfectly with the characters' pragmatic worldviews.

There's a lot going on beneath the surface of this story, and I've been turning it over in my head since I finished. The central theme is survival—and not the noble, heroic kind. This is survival as calculated self-interest, as the willingness to sacrifice everything including your own morality in order to stay afloat. Qin Yunxi and Sang Sang are not traditional protagonists. They're not good people in a bad situation. They're people who have made peace with the fact that the world is cruel and decided to be crueler. The word "baggage" appears multiple times and it's clearly meant to be taken literally and figuratively. Bai Tingting calls Sang Sang baggage, implying she's dead weight, an unwanted addition to the family. But the irony is staggering because Bai Tingting herself turns out to be the real baggage—illegitimate, unwanted, a secret that could destroy the family. The author is playing with these ideas of worth and belonging in a way that feels deeply intentional. Food is another recurring symbol. The three meat dishes Qin Yunxi buys represent everything she's willing to do for her daughter—sacrifice, calculation, love expressed through provision. In a time of scarcity, food is power. And the fact that Sang Sang pretends to be sick to avoid eating at the table while secretly indulging in pastries speaks to the performative nature of their entire existence. The setting itself—1963 China, the Cultural Revolution looming in the background—is not accidental. This is a world where your past can destroy you in an instant, where loyalty to family can get you sent to the countryside, where a single report from a colleague can upend your entire life. Han Xiaosheng's downfall isn't just backstory; it's the thesis statement of the novel. The world is unpredictable and dangerous, and the only safe strategy is to never be tied to anything or anyone you can't afford to lose. "Men were replaceable." This isn't just Qin Yunxi's opinion; it's the novel's argument about the nature of relationships in a world this harsh. Love, loyalty, family bonds—all of these are conditional, transactional, subject to the same cost-benefit analysis that governs everything else. But here's what I find most fascinating: the novel doesn't seem to judge its characters for this worldview. It presents their pragmatism as rational, even admirable. Sang Sang's internal monologue about why she shouldn't suffer alongside her father is logically sound. What's the point of being a "good daughter" if it just means suffering together for no reason? The illegitimacy reveal at the end of Chapter 3 adds another layer to these themes. The Bai family, with all their moral superiority and judgment, is built on a lie. Zhang Hui's arrogance, her belief that she and her children are better than Qin Yunxi and Sang Sang, is founded on ignorance of her own family's secrets. The novel seems to be saying that everyone's baggage is someone else's secret, and the only thing that matters is how you manage it.

Let me talk about pacing because this author is a master at it. The chapter opens with this quiet, almost mundane scene—Sang Sang eating chocolate, thinking about her father. It's slow, deliberate, almost meditative. And then we get this line: "Not as good as the ones her father used to buy from the Friendship Store." One sentence, and suddenly we're in her head, feeling her nostalgia, her loss. Then—bam—the Bai family revelation. The baby swap backstory comes flooding in, and the author handles it perfectly. Instead of dumping it all at once, we get it through Sang Sang's curiosity, through her observations of Bai Lanlan. The pacing here is brilliant because we're discovering this information alongside the protagonist. We're not being told—we're experiencing. The meal scene is where the pacing really shines. All these children fighting over meat while Sang Sang picks at vegetables... the contrast is so sharp, so deliberate. The author slows down time here, making us feel every second of that awkward family gathering. And Bai Lanlan's internal monologue—her inferiority, her realization of how different her life has been—this is where the emotional weight builds. Then the college entrance exam cancellation. The author could have rushed this, made it a quick news item. But no—Teacher Gong's entrance, the silence, the chaos, Sang Sang's desperate hope that it's temporary... the pacing here is almost unbearable. We feel every second of that classroom's devastation. And the chapter ends with Sang Sang pulling herself together, focusing on the present. "After pulling herself out of the blow, Sang Sang began focusing on the present." This transition from devastation to acceptance is handled with such grace. The author doesn't linger too long on the sadness—she moves us forward, just like Sang Sang does. The structure here is perfect: quiet personal moment → family revelation → social gathering → world-shattering news → acceptance. Each section builds on the last, creating this emotional arc that feels both inevitable and surprising.

Okay, I need to process what just happened with the college entrance exam cancellation. I literally sat there reading this and felt my chest tighten. Five years of studying, five years of preparation, and then Teacher Gong just walks in and says it's over. Indefinitely. Most likely never. The classroom reaction was so real—"What? The exam is canceled?" "Does that mean all these years of studying were for nothing?!" I could feel the panic, the disbelief, the sheer devastation. And Sang Sang? She was sitting there hoping it was temporary, hoping even two or three years would be fine. She could wait. But the answer shattered her hope completely. What broke me though was Qin Yunxi's reaction. Her mother, coming home from grocery shopping, seeing her daughter locked in her room, devastated... "My daughter is so beautiful—how could I let you work in a factory?" This mother-daughter bond is so tender and real. Qin Yunxi isn't just worried about safety—she's protecting her daughter's dignity, her future, her sense of self. And Sang Sang's acceptance of reality... "Life had to go on. She couldn't just sit around waiting for news of the exam's return. Even if she was still unwilling to accept it." This line made me want to cry. She's so young, so talented, and the world just... took everything from her. But she doesn't collapse. She adapts. She finds a way forward. The friendship with Yuan Yuan is the emotional anchor here. Three years of genuine care, of someone who sees Sang Sang not as some aloof beauty but as a person worth protecting. When Yuan Yuan shares her father's braised pork, when she reminds him to add sugar because Sang Sang prefers it—that's love. That's the kind of quiet, everyday devotion that makes you believe in friendship. But the Bai family subplot... the baby swap, the resentment, the hatred that led to such a cruel act... it's tragic on so many levels. "It was the two innocent children who paid the price for their mothers' actions." Sang Sang and Bai Tingting, switched at birth, raised as strangers, now forced to navigate this bizarre new reality together. The emotional complexity here is staggering.

Okay so I need to talk about the alley scene because WOW. I literally sat up in bed reading that part. Sang Sang gets pinned down by a guy with a gun and instead of just being a helpless victim, she does the most calculated thing ever—she bandages his wound and then KICKS IT. Like, the audacity. The absolute audacity. And here's the thing that made this plot twist so satisfying: the author set it up perfectly. We already know Sang Sang is scheming from the department store scene where she charms the sales clerk with flattery to get future favors. So when she's in the alley, it makes total sense that she wouldn't just freeze—she'd assess, calculate, and strike back. The narrative thread is tight. But what really got me was the chase scene. Those men in black showing up, the flat-headed guy yanking off her headscarf, and Sang Sang immediately breaking into tears and acting like a terrified teenager. She played that role so well she convinced them she was just some scared girl. 'I'm going to tell my dad when I get home, wuu…' — I was literally wheezing. This girl is a natural actor. The structure here is brilliant too. The author builds from a seemingly ordinary shopping trip into pure survival mode in like three paragraphs. No warning. One minute she's picking out clothes, the next she's on the ground with a gun to her face. That's how you keep readers hooked. And then the chapter ends with Pei Che pointing his gun at her as she runs away like a rabbit. CLIFFHANGER. I immediately opened the next chapter. Sorry, I have no self-control when it comes to this kind of pacing.

The stakes in this novel just went through the roof. Let me explain why. On the personal level, Sang Sang's entire future was built around the college entrance exam. Three years in Harbin, studying, preparing, dreaming of university in the capital. And then—nothing. The exam is canceled. Indefinitely. Most likely never. What does this mean for her? For someone as ambitious as Sang Sang, as unwilling to live an ordinary life... this is devastating. The stakes are incredibly high because we understand exactly what she's lost. But the author doesn't stop there. The family conflict is equally intense. The baby swap revelation creates this web of tension that's been building for fifteen years. Zhang Hui's hatred of Wang Cuihua, the resentment, the jealousy—these emotions led to one of the most cruel acts imaginable. And now both families are dealing with the aftermath. Bai Anrong bringing his biological daughter home, the elders present, the formal acknowledgment of lineage... this is loaded with dramatic potential. The external conflict is also escalating. The streets are chaotic, people are wearing red armbands, getting swept up in turmoil. Bai Zhixin is rarely home. The neighborhood committee is pushing young people to the countryside. Sang Sang is caught in the middle of this historical moment, and the stakes feel real and immediate. What makes this conflict so compelling is that it's layered. There's the personal stakes (Sang Sang's future), the family stakes (the baby swap revelation), the social stakes (the political turmoil), and the interpersonal stakes (Sang Sang vs. Bai Tingting). Each layer adds pressure, each conflict raises the tension. And the suspense? The author leaves us with this hint: "What Sang Sang didn't know, however, was that Bai Tingting was no longer the same Bai Tingting she once knew." This is a perfect cliffhanger. It suggests that the rivalry will evolve, that Bai Tingting has changed in ways we can't yet predict. The stakes just got even higher. The author is masterful at making us care about outcomes because every conflict feels personal, every stake feels real, and every resolution feels earned.