Ruan Jianshu was born at first light on a bitterly cold winter morning during the “Three Years of Difficulty.” He was the fourth child his mother had given birth to. His arrival filled his long-yearning parents with joy, since all three children born before him had died in infancy. His parents struggled to raise their children, and later his younger brother also died, leaving him an only child with neither brothers nor sisters. To ease the pain of losing their children, his parents took in a girl named Tong Fangying, beginning the unusual journey of their special family.
Spanning more than sixty years, the novel’s portrait of Ruan Jianshu’s remarkable life bears the imprint of its era. The poison of those absurd years left people ignorant of what they should have learned. Fortunately, he was recommended for a position as a water conservancy worker, allowing him to devote his passionate commitment to his career.
The novel traces the lives of Ruan Jianshu and his wife, Tong Fangying, as they support one another and strive through hardship, while the society around them forms the backdrop. It brings to life the sweeping social and historical changes that transformed the Chinese countryside over more than half a century, and portrays the Chinese people as a resilient multitude pressing steadfastly onward.
Facing reality head-on, the novel praises good and condemns evil, with vivid attention to rural water conservancy projects. It is a rare work about water conservancy workers, a subject seldom explored.
Using symbolism, the novel’s three parts, “The Flow from the Source,” “The Surging Current,” and “The Confluence,” capture the course of life. Though life is a process of moving toward death, and its path is full of twists and turns, under the inevitable laws governing society’s overall development, it ultimately runs on like the Yangtze: its waters flow eastward, after all!
