Winter 2018, Taipei.
Lin Jiaming successfully proposed to his girlfriend Wu Xinyi. He is a "second generation Taiwanese businessman" from Beijing, and she is a "second generation mainland Chinese spouse" who was born and raised in Taipei. They decided to hold an engagement party in Beijing and invite relatives and friends from both sides of the Taiwan Strait to witness it. However, this piece of good news was like a pebble thrown into a calm lake, creating ripples that spanned thirty years.
The good news first caused waves in the Wu family in Taipei. Wu Xinyi's mother, Wang Xuemei, was a mainland bride who came to Taiwan in the early 1990s. When she heard that her daughter was going to "marry back," her dusty memories instantly burst forth - that was when she first got married, the loneliness of being regarded as an "other" because of her different accent and habits, and the bitterness of spending countless late nights secretly chewing on homesickness. Almost instinctively, she voted against the marriage.
At the same time, things were not peaceful for the Lin family in Beijing. Lin Jiaming's father, Lin Hao, was an early Taiwanese businessman who expanded westward. He started from scratch and was well aware of the hardships involved. He appreciates Xinyi's intelligence, but worries that his son's future family will struggle to survive amid the differences and misunderstandings between the two sides of the Taiwan Strait, just as he did back then.
This novel and its characters are purely fictitious. Any similarity is purely coincidental and should not be imitated.
