Brothers Take on the World

In 1980, by the Xiang River in Hunan, there was a place called Wangjia Village. A couple had twins: a boy named Wang Jiawei and a girl named Liu Ying. He was a villager born and raised there, while she was an educated youth sent down from the city. Touched by the care he showed her, she married him. In 1980, Liu Ying gave birth to twins. The older one was named Wang Dahu, and the younger Wang Xiaohu, names chosen by their grandfather. Wang Dahu was a bit slow-witted, but Wang Xiaohu was very clever. When the boys were three, the country reinstated the college entrance exam. Liu Ying secretly took the exam without telling her family, passed, and left for school, abandoning her children. Wang Jiawei waited at home for two years, but there was no word from her. He decided to take a train to Beijing to find his wife, but through carelessness he boarded the wrong train and ended up in Guangzhou. At a loss as to what to do, he met several fellow villagers. They took him to Shenzhen, promising to help him make a fortune. It turned out they planned to swim to Hong Kong that night. By a strange twist of fate, he made it to Hong Kong, and eventually reached the United States, after which all news of him ceased. Left behind were his eighty-year-old father and two five-year-old boys. But the old man was a veteran of the Red Army, with a life full of mystery and legend. He had taken part in the Autumn Harvest Uprising, marched on the Long March, and fought the Japanese. After the founding of New China, he returned to the village at the age of forty-five and married, but his wife died in childbirth after giving birth to Wang Jiawei. His son and daughter-in-law had both left and never returned, leaving him alone once more to raise his two grandsons. He raised the boys until they were eighteen, then sent the brothers off to find their parents. The two brothers, too, began their journey into the wider world...