In 1975, Ning Wanqing, a wealthy young woman from Shanghai, is forced to join the educated youth sent to the countryside in northern Shaanxi. There she meets Fu Zhancheng, a production team leader whose heart belongs to someone else.
She's spoiled and can barely hold a hoe steady. He scolds her in front of the whole village until she can't lift her head.
He's stubborn, convinced that city youths can't endure hardship, and treats her coldly.
But she refuses to give in.
Her hands blister and bleed, yet she grits her teeth and keeps working.
At night, she lights a kerosene lamp and teaches the village children to read.
When a torrential rain threatens the harvest, she works until she collapses, and he sweeps her into his arms...
What he doesn't know is that...
She secretly uses the medicine she brought from Shanghai to save the villagers he cares about most.
Her diary is filled with little moments of him teaching her how to farm.
Though she could use her family's connections to return to the city, she hides her transfer orders again and again...
Until his “white moonlight” suddenly returns: the woman he'd waited five years for comes back after getting divorced.
Everyone in the village says Team Leader Fu has finally found his happiness.
Ning Wanqing quietly packs her things, ready to leave.
But on a night when floodwaters rage, she hears that he's been swept away while trying to save the villagers...
That night, she searches the entire river in the pouring rain and finally understands: she's not afraid of hardship, and she's not afraid to wait for him. She's only afraid that the white moonlight in his heart was never her.
