[Preference for Sons + Family Life + Marriage + Mutual Healing] Jiang Xiaonian, Lin Yan, and Jiang Nan were university classmates and close friends. Though they chose different paths after graduation, they stayed in touch. After graduating, Jiang Xiaonian married her senior and had an adorable baby. She seemed to have the happy, fulfilling life everyone envied, but only she knew how impossible it was to balance family, dreams, and work. Her life was a complete mess. Lin Yan’s father had hoped she would be a boy, but she was born a girl. Her mother placed great expectations on her, and Lin Yan had ambitions of her own. She moved to Beijing to pursue her future and finally managed to establish herself in the big city. But as she got older, her mother kept pressuring her to marry. In the end, faced with her father’s serious illness and his dying wish, she gave everything up, returned to her hometown, and chose to marry. Right after graduating, Jiang Nan followed her mother’s wishes and returned to her hometown to become a civil servant. But her mother’s overwhelming need for control made her love life a minefield. To escape the cage of her home, she attempted suicide in a bid for freedom. After weathering many hardships, the three women encouraged and comforted one another. Breaking free of convention and challenging prejudice, they finally found their way through the maze of dreams, love, and family.
