When the thread-bound book turns to ashes, when the sound of the pipa sinks into the Gobi desert, when the formula is written on the paper of the cigarette box - this is a story about how culture survives in a fragile form with resilience. A teaching assistant at Peking University, a Pingtan artist, and a nuclear physicist, their three fates were intertwined during the ten years of the Cultural Revolution. They found each other in the forbidden voices and passed on the fire of civilization in the cracks of history.
This novel and its characters are purely fictitious. Any similarity is purely coincidental and should not be imitated.
