Song He, a graduate student at the Agricultural University, returned to his hometown to promote a new variety of wheat, but he dug up an old monument in his own land with the words "Starve to death" - this was a secret apology that his grandfather secretly buried when he was a production team leader in the 1960s.
The villagers laughed at him for reading stupidly, until successive years of drought caused all the crops to wither, leaving only the Song family's fields with a strange green color. The old branch secretary knocked on the door in the middle of the night and pulled out a yellowed drawing of the commune: when people were dying of hunger all over the country, the grain seeds secretly hidden by grandpa were poisoned by witchcraft.
When an agricultural company entered the village with a contract, Song He found a farming spell written in blood on the back of the family tree. On a rainy night, he knelt on the ridge of the field and dug out ninety-nine earthen jars. In each of them lay ungerminated wheat seeds and a name of a villager who had starved to death.
On the harvest day, the whole village watched as the Song River burned down the golden wheat fields, and a new monument emerged from the ashes:
"Those who sleep here are all farmers."
