[Chinese BL novel] 他来自1945 by 听原 / He travelled from 1945

Its a pity that it has a default picture, it was truly a nice story.

Summary: Zhou Sheng suddenly travelled from the troubled times to modern times where people have enough food and clothing, a prosperous era. In '45 he was already a known boss Zhou, living in danger and helping those in need. Now he became a notorious secong-generation Zhou Sheng, who bullied the weak and feared the strong, who spent a year in a coma after an explosion accident at the mall, but was also actually married to a popular figre in the entertainment industry - Best Actor Chu Qinbai. But now this body is his and responsibilities are his too.

It's not a rebirth novel or a script, Zhou Sheng travels to the future and simply occupies the body of another Zhou Sheng. The original Zhou Sheng was as good as dead and might have never woken up actually. Now Zhou Sheng faces complicated family situation and a sudden marriage partner.

Also this novel has a dose of patriotism actually, but it's a healthy one. It is not shown through belittling of other places/people like they do sometimes in other novels. Mainly it has something to do with Zhou Sheng's upbringing and his core values. He's an upright young man. 

Although for such a person to be in a modern business is a picture, but for Zhou Sheng maybe the picture is different, but the core thing of being a businessman is actually not a new term, he handled his family business in the past. This inner confidence and power allowed him to step forward in this life and lead the Zhou Enterprise to new heights. He does not do things for money and fame, just for responsibility of sorts, because he now occupies someone's body and this body has a family, although not very responsible father, but the one who cared to do something for his son, yet the Zhou family faced predicament and decline, sooner or later it would be completely gone. Out of responsibility Zhou Sheng stepped out to help. And this is where a story of mysterious person Mr. Zhou starts.

Also a note, the summary on JJ feels not misleading, but gives a different feeling from what the novel is actually like.

It's quite a peaceful story with exciting ending. Zhou Sheng holds the power of the Zhou company and starts revitalization, although it sounds vague at what they're doing, but Zhou Sheng stepped to a success in several months and turned things around. Because of his temperament he connected with many influential people and instead of being like a capitalist who thinks of profits he chose a more stable and traditional way. So he got more and more important projects to handle.  He's very human-oriented, because he knows the importance of people's livelyhood, he always cared for it, this is why he connected with charitable organizations, but not much emphasis on it, mainly the story follows his and Chu Qinbai's career paths, their interactions and slow falling in love.

Main characters. 

Zhou Sheng. Upright young man. He was brought up by a strict father who instilled the good values in him, thus he does not understand and finds those underhanded methods vulgar. But his uprightness and modesty does not mean he is prude to the core and stuck up. He can connect with many people and influence them, but he is mainly not like he is too stubborn to do his way, it's like the ability to influence others that his way is the right way to do, he does it with confidence and backbone, with right attitude that others find admirable. So he is quite interesting correct character. You could say he is very humane, I think.

I remember reading a novel where person (also BL story) travels from the past, but they were brought up almost like a woman from backyard and this man had hysteria when someone in the modern world touched their hand and they felt dirty, like they don't deserve their husband now, it kinda felt bad, especially after living in the modern world for quite some time, so it felt unbendable. Zhou Sheng is not like that, he keeps his modesty when it comes to feelings and intimacy (which arrived much later in the novel, read the part about Romance to understand why), but he slowly adapts to modern times and integrates, but some things like intimacy with his husband later in the novel will not put him into shame as it did for the first time.

Chu Qinbai. Best Actor comes from a wealthy family, but it also has a bad backstory, this shaped his rather sharp character. He is very smart and handles both his acting career and business career. He is a pretty interesting entity in entertainment industry, some try to blacken him, but he is very popular and does things his own way. Classic smart and sharp ML. When the novel started he thought it was the old Zhou Sheng who woke up, the one who could blackmail anyone for money, did many bad things, but slowly he realized that two Zhou Shengs are not like a new person, it is indeed two different people. He managed to figure things out himself no matter how outrageous they are, he was really attracted to his "new" husband and soon he fell in love.

Secondary characters.

Main secondary characters are immediate family members. Others are team members, friends, collegues etc. There is a great number of those, although it's not like they take a big part and we concentrate on them, but they make the story fuller. Through them we can sometimes see the character of MC and ML. For example a young man named Xu Chao, he was helped by original Zhou Sheng as a joke, but now worked sowly his way up as a special assistant to Zhou Sheng.  His actions and attitude helped to correct his half-brother Zhou Song into a better person. Several collegues from the Zhou company who were suppressed came with him to open up business and also were included into a new core team. Even if someone tried to have thoughts about Zhou Sheng, but many actually did not even move, especially when Zhou Sheng gave a feeling that it's a blashemy to touch him.

As for Chu Qinbai we know he treats his team well, when it comes to the mostly appearing assistant DengDeng you know she won't be scolded or reprimanded even if she oversteps boundries sometimes. His agent knew the old Zhou Sheng and was always wary of new ZS, but she is pretty responsible, but you know Chu Qinbai gives her a lot of headaches with his actions of "I do what I want". He is mainly shaped as uncompromising, like he has a strong opinion when it comes to his family and does not bend.

Story.

We start from the very low point. ZS just came out of the hospital and his body is pretty weak. He used the marriage partner as a temporary residence to gain some strength and get his health better and later entered Zhou. His plan was to turn the shelved plans into reality and he did so. He connected with ShengYu (Chu family company, lead Chu Xiumin, Qinbai's half-brother) and achieved success, through this connection he later led a big project and this is what started to involve unscrupulous people and involved companies that were deeply connected with the previous Chu president, Qinbai's father. This resulted to the exciting ending mentioned above.

Qinbai's career mainly involved filming, but he didn't do much of it, because he stars only in several works a year and does not take part in any other programs to gain traffic. But because he is a public figure there of course were several scandals. The longest one would involve a young actor named Ren who was actually was helped by Qinbai just in passing, but later got the idea of gaining traffic and also get closer, but mainly it was involved with interests and not love how this person claimed, so you can guess how he was dealt with eventually. But mainly there weren't many people he was involved with.

Family drama.

Zhou family had little drama and it was mainly solved pretty quickly. Their situation is as follows. Zhou Sheng was born to the first wife, they got divorced and soon his father re-married, thus he got half-brother Zhou Song, but because his mother was quite narrow-minded, she guided her son to be better, cater to their father and eventually get the company. New Zhou Sheng wasn't easy to deal with. After Zhou Song got to critical point and actually paid someone to harm Zhou Sheng, Zhou Sheng sent him to sit. Thsi allowed Zhou Song to recognize that things are not simple and Zhou Sheng won't bother about family relations, but when he came out and worked honestly (actually being scared of Zhou Sheng a bit), he knew that Zhou Sheng will not suppress him, but will allow him to grow accordingly and delegate power into his hands. By this time their father had problems with heart and had an operation, so the power of Zhou company was entrusted to Zhou Sheng completely.

Chu family was more complicated. It had three children, first two from the first marriage, third one, Chu Qinbai, from the second. His mother was an actress Qin Rou, but she committed suicide in desperation. Qinbai hated his father since. Mr. Chu is mainly like a despot with great need for control and only Qinbai's manipulation behind the scenes he made his father step down and put Chu Xiumin into the company. But Xiumin was the most filial. The second child is a doctor who refused the arranged marriage and entered army and married a doctor. Of course Qinbai refused to bow down too, thus his agreement to the father Zhou and marriage to original Zhou Sheng. Chu father is not a stranger to unscrupulous means and later because of his deep involvement with the people who wanted take a bit of the big project led by Zhou Sheng and due to what he did you can guess his end by the end.

Romance.

I think Chu Qinbai started to get connected at the first movie Zhou Sheng visited (although it was described in general as Qinbai had no real idea when exactly it happened, but he knew exactly when he realized his feelings, they just happened), the theme of that movie was Republic of China, historical drama and one of the characters happened to be his real uncle in the past. Qinbai saw more and more of Zhou Sheng, at first he thought there was no amnesia and it was like a trick, after all he had a really bad attitude, before he noticed that many things did not make sense, like Zhou Sheng's knowledge and abilities in calligraphy etc. So he got the most nonsense idea at first, if Zhou Sheng was replaced, but facts proved he did not, but his involvement with the past revealed the truth. By this time he not only deeply loved Zhou Sheng, but they also came together.

From Zhou Sheng's side the road took longer and for a reason, he did not have great attachment to this world, because he felt like occupying someone's body. He felt lucky that he now lives in such a great era and will do what he needs to do, but he never planned to connect with someone emotionally, because he lost too many people in his original life, he saw too many tragedies and felt it was a truly great responsibility he was not ready for. But Qinbai was too insistent and he wanted to work for them to be together. Eventually during an extreme situation Zhou Sheng acted instinctively and protected Qinbai and this was the time that he saw his heart and agreed to try it out. Their love and passion actually evolved rapidly, maybe because Qinbai knows how to push forward and Zhou Sheng actually did not mind, he was a bit reserved at first, but even this stage passed, he loved his husband and they considered it as fate.

As for fate, it was Qinbai's idea, after they both confessed that Qinbai knew the origins of Zhou Sheng and Zhou Sheng admitted to it, Qinbai really considered it as fate that they could come together like this.

Their relationship in the later stages is pretty nice and they complement each other really well, Zhou Sheng is more a steady and calm person and Qinbai is more impulsive and passionate.

RATE: 4,5/5. Surprisingly, I really liked it. I was okay with the pace and the content, the relationship seemed great. There is no great intrigue, but there is still bit of excitement. All in all found it a good story.