Those Old Sesame and Rotten Millet Things in My Family

This long and serious literary work is set against the background of the great changes in Chinese society from the late 20th century to the early 21st century. Through the ups and downs of three generations of an ordinary rural family, it outlines a grand picture of the difficult transformation of rural China into modern urban civilization. The story begins in a remote and isolated mountain village in the south. Under the spring breeze of reform, a series of waves of the times such as land contracting, the rise of township enterprises, the surge of migrant workers, and the acceleration of urbanization have constantly impacted the traditional patriarchal order and ethical concepts. The protagonist moves from the fields to the reinforced concrete city, struggling between ideals and reality, persistence and compromise, memory and forgetfulness. He is not only a witness of the times, but also a gravekeeper of local civilization and a stranger in modern life. With a calm and powerful writing style, the novel describes the dusk of farming civilization, the rupture of rural emotions, and the individual's loss and pursuit in the great changes. In the tension of the dual structure of urban and rural areas, it explores the anxiety of identity, the collapse and reconstruction of traditional values, and the eternal proposition of how people place their souls in the torrent of modernization. This novel and its characters are purely fictitious. Any similarity is purely coincidental and should not be imitated.