When heavy rains in 2010 washed away a small southern town, Liu Qiang, a college student in the Department of Architecture, rescued Wang Xiu, a working girl who was about to be swept away by the floods. This unexpected encounter planted the seeds of a fateful entanglement spanning fifteen years in the damp rental house in the urban village.
Liu Qiang, who comes from the depths of Daba Mountain, carries the hope of the whole village and uses knowledge to build a ladder of survival in the steel forest of the city; Wang Xiu, who works on the assembly line of a clothing factory, secretly takes notes on clothing design and weaves her dream of becoming a designer amidst the roar of sewing machines. The warmth of their palms holding each other while setting up stalls in the night market, the cup of coffee they shared while staying up late studying in the library, and the figures supporting each other in front of the demolition ruins constitute the most moving picture of life in contemporary China.
From the disaster relief tents of the Wenchuan earthquake to the backstage of Paris Fashion Week, from the elite office buildings of Wall Street to the experimental fields of rural revitalization, the two souls are constantly torn and reshaped in the violent shocks of the times. When Liu Qiang discovered the yellowed land deed in his grandmother's inheritance, and when Wang Xiu found the soul of clothing design in the Chu embroidery pattern, they finally understood: land and starry sky have never been single-choice questions.
This epic of the times spanning fifteen years begins with the announcement of demolition of urban villages and ends with a blueprint for rural revitalization. It uses the longitude and latitude lines of Chu embroidery to connect major historical nodes such as the Wenchuan earthquake, the rise of e-commerce, and epidemic prevention and control. In the collision of intangible cultural heritage revitalization and smart agriculture, it writes the spiritual return of Chinese youth in the new era. When the neon lights of the city and the fragrance of rice in the fields interweave under the moonlight, two souls that have broken out of their cocoons in the gap between urban and rural areas will eventually find their own coordinate system in the wave of the times.
