Synopsis of Making Peace with the Past: At over 200,000 words, this is a long novel with a romantic love story at its heart. Following the changing relationship between Chen Yuangui, a penny-pinching schemer, and Niu Li, a fiery-tempered woman, it explores the difficulties and dilemmas involved in resolving exceptional and intractable petition cases. People turn to petitioning when they have nowhere else to go. Throughout history, they have never stopped seeking redress, treating it as an ordinary part of life, like eating and getting dressed. When people face disputes over their interests or feel wronged, their first thought is to seek out a fair-minded official. But in this day and age, when social conflicts are complex and interests are tangled together, right and wrong, gains and losses, fame and fortune can sometimes seem like parallel lines that will never meet, leaving no clear answers. Since ancient times, even the fairest official has struggled to judge domestic disputes. Some knots can be untied; those that cannot become calamities. Through the fortunes of Chen Yuangui, Su Weidong, Hu Chunfeng, Niu Li, Lin Huahua, and others as the Nanzhou Agricultural Machinery Factory rises from nothing, flourishes, declines, and transforms, the novel portrays their conflicting and complicated feelings about life, learning, work, unemployment, and bankruptcy, along with their personal experience of rising from the ashes and being reborn.
Although it is niche, it is refreshing and refined, and its thinking is sharp. It is worth savoring!
The plot of the novel is ups and downs, the characters are vividly personal, and it reflects the conflicts in real life. It is highly recommended reading.