In 1975, Lin Xiaotang, the cherished daughter of the Jiangnan Textile Mill director, met a lean, upright man from the mountains at a matchmaking dinner in Wutong Alley. His old Mao suit could not hide his dignified bearing, and the impoverished scholar Gu Qingyan, learned and eloquent, swept the young heiress off her feet. A sewing machine and bicycle among the lavish wedding gifts met a widowed mother and brothers waiting to be cared for beneath an earthen wall. Sweet lotus root stuffed with osmanthus sugar in fine porcelain bowls could not blend with cornmeal mush in coarse clay pots. When a pampered city flower was planted in the frozen soil of a mountain ravine, the clash between their worlds, from music, chess, calligraphy, and painting to firewood, rice, oil, and salt, lent the moonlight the warmth of everyday life. Watch this mismatched couple weather the tides of their era hand in hand, breaking through their shells and turning the distance between city and country into the sweetness of understanding.
