In the late 1970s, three families, namely the Zhuang family, the Lin family, and the Wu family lived in an alley in the family area of a cotton spinning factory in Suzhou. Changes in the times such as the resumption of the college entrance examination, the return of educated youth to the city, and reform and opening up, have brought about earth-shaking changes in the fate of the parents and children of the three families.
As the times changed, the elders were either transferred or stayed on without pay, each looking for a way out.
The younger generation strives hard with the changing times.
Zhuang Tunan, the eldest son of Zhuang, was admitted to Tongji's Department of Architecture, but the state was responsible for all the work. He could not decide where he would go after graduation. At the same time, his crush Li Jia gave up the budding relationship between them in order to stay in Shanghai. A few years later, the two met again at the construction site in Pudong New Area...
The second daughter Zhuang Xiaoting was admitted to Shanghai Jiaotong University. After graduation, she and her boyfriend Lin Dongzhe separated. The two secretly obtained their marriage certificate without telling their families...
My nephew Xiang Pengfei is a son of an educated youth. He returned to Suzhou to go to school alone, but failed the college entrance examination...
Social youths Li Yiming and Song Xiangyang became individual industrial and commercial households and township enterprise technicians respectively after failing the exam twice...
Wu Shanshan, the eldest daughter of the neighbor Wu family, was dragged down by her family environment and became competitive...
Zhang Min, the stepdaughter of the Wu family, studied at a textile vocational high school. When she graduated, the cotton spinning factory was downsizing its personnel and no longer recruiting children of employees with diplomas from vocational high schools or technical schools...
A small courtyard, with smoke curling up from the kitchen,
The story of several families and two generations.
