Through the Drought of the ’60s to the Modern World, the Whole Family Eats Their Fill Every Meal

In the great drought of 1960, even the grass roots had been dug clean by people. Lin Xiaohe thought her family—with the little ones so small and the injured—wouldn’t make it through. But then she discovered that the jade pendant hanging around her neck could reach decades into the future on one side, and hundreds of years into the past on the other. Hundreds of years ago, wild vegetables were everywhere, and no one wanted them. Decades later, people were fighting to trade meat for wild vegetables. In that famine year when even grass roots were being scraped clean, Lin Xiaohe traded supplies across two eras—not only fattening up her whole family, but also leading the entire village through the disaster years.