Dream of Golden Years

Xia Xiaolan (夏晓兰, played by Zhou Ye) is a modern real estate executive. After a major upheaval at her company she is unexpectedly sent back to 1983, where she is reborn as an eighteen-year-old girl from a poor rural family. She no longer wants to accept the fate handed to her. She believes education can change a life, and she pushes through one obstacle after another toward a university place.

Alongside her studies she starts to trade. She begins with duck eggs and fried pancakes, then moves into reselling clothes, and the series follows her business sense toward the property market. On the way she meets Zhou Cheng (played by Zhai Xiaowen), a legal prodigy from a prominent Beijing family. The two build a romance on mutual support.

The story is set in 1983, in the early years of China's reform and opening-up (改革开放, gaige kaifang, "reform and opening up"), when private trade was returning to small towns and villages and a university place was one of the few routes out of the countryside. The series presents Xiaolan's rise as part of the wider effort of a generation of young people to change their lives in that period.

It is adapted from the web novel Chong Sheng Ba Ling: Xi Fu You Dian La (重生八零：媳妇有点辣, "Reborn in the Eighties: The Wife Is a Bit Spicy"), a Shuqi novel credited on English Wikipedia to Bao Zhuangcheng. The Paper reported at the wrap of filming in mid-2025 that the drama was produced by iQIYI with Hainan Huayu Culture Technology. It is directed by Zhu Dongning and Huang Chun.

The project was registered with the National Radio and Television Administration in April 2024 and began filming in November 2024. The title is a greeting to a year, spoken by someone who has arrived there from the future.