Green Leather Train and Rice Flower Stars

In the summer of 1973, Shen Yanqiu, an educated youth from Shanghai, took the green train to Daoxiang Village in the south of the Yangtze River to jump in line. In the sweltering carriage, he met Chen Mo, an educated youth from Beijing, and Zhou Xiaoning, a girl from Shanghai. He also met Xiao Yanzi, a village girl with a red braid and a mole at the end of her eye. From the awkward moment when the enamel cup fell to the ground when he first stepped in the mud, to the touch when she tied his apron in the rice field, the collision between city and countryside gradually created warmth in the sweat. Under the starlight of the threshing floor, the mille-feuille cloth shoes she stuffed were mixed with the scent of mothballs, and we spent time together reading Jane Eyre by the kerosene lamp, letting the blue ink on the tip of the pen and the mud dots in the rice fields weave the hazy feelings of a special era. In the torrential rain of the times, the impact of the Class Education Association and the false accusations of "reactionary books" tested the two. Her heartbeat when she was dodging stray bullets in the reed swamp, and the red scarf she raised when saying goodbye on the platform have become the most profound marks of youth. When the college entrance examination resumed in 1977, Shen Yanqiu returned to the city with her rice seeds and butterfly specimens, while she stayed in the countryside to write new stories. Many years later, when he improved farmland with technology, she promoted agricultural technology in the field. Pens and farm tools, gears and rice ears resonated over the years, bringing the green leather train of forty years ago. This novel and its characters are purely fictitious. Any similarity is purely coincidental and should not be imitated.