In an ancient city called "Qinghe" in the south of the Yangtze River, deep in an inconspicuous old street, stands a huge sycamore tree that has witnessed hundreds of years of wind and rain. Its thick shade has protected generations after generations and connected countless ordinary and profound life stories.
The story starts in the late 1970s and revolves around several families and a dozen boys and girls with different personalities under the sycamore tree. From the candies and buried secrets shared under the tree as children, to the ignorant love, fierce quarrels, and infinite longing and confusion about the future in adolescence; from the first major turning point in their fate after the resumption of the college entrance examination, to the wave of reform and opening up, they walked out of the old streets and rushed to their different battlefields in life.
The novel will describe the life trajectories of these childhood sweethearts for more than forty years in an epic and delicate way:
* Lin Jing'an: A smart and sensitive girl, her heart is full of longing for literature and distant places, but due to family ties and the limitations of the times, she is constantly struggling between ideals and reality. There is a deep-seated relationship between her and Lu Yuanyang, the "King of Children" under the sycamore tree, which spans decades and has gone through misunderstandings, separations and reunions.
* Lu Yuanyang: An unruly and righteous young man who dares to think and act, and is a trendsetter in the wave of reform. He has grown from a street boy to a business elite step by step, but he can never forget the innocence and original intention under the plane tree, as well as the unfinished fate between him and Lin Jing'an.
