Maple and Frost

A story set in a bygone era, about the difficult life of a disabled poet.

A lifetime of illness and a love that was misplaced.

Zhu Xiaoya, a young woman who loves the arts, throws herself wholeheartedly into love and spends her youth protecting her marriage. In the end, it cannot withstand the tests of time and hardship. Over the course of several decades, she struggles onward through the double torment of physical suffering and emotional pain, searching for a way forward amid a shattered family and a life of hardship. Literature is a ray of light in her darkest hours, the spiritual strength and faint hope that sustain her through a difficult life.

She raises the banner of the farmers' poetry society on her frail shoulders, devoting herself to rural life through her writing and enriching village culture, bringing a distinctive humanistic beauty to the simple countryside. Though she has weathered life's vicissitudes and seen how cold the world can be, she remains kind and looks toward the sun. She repays cruelty with kindness, carefully caring for her mother-in-law, who once spoiled her son and drove his wife away, and who now suffers from dementia.

After half a lifetime of hardship, she finds a way out of despair. She makes a life through literature and writes through suffering, breaking free of fate's shackles. Her illness is cured, and she stands tall once more, undergoing a profound transformation of the soul. She carves out a long and arduous path for a disabled woman from the lower classes, one who endures hardship and is reborn through adversity.