Two pressing livelihood issues are tangled together: exorbitant bride prices have become a shackle on marriage, while the threat of falling back into poverty due to illness looms over the whole village. Wang Hao, the village accountant's son, and Li Xue, the women's director's daughter, have been in love for five years, but they are at an impasse because her family insists on a bride price of 188,000 yuan, equivalent to six years of the average local household income. Meanwhile, Zhang Guilan's son, Zhao Tiezhu, is poisoned while spraying pesticides in a cornfield. His hospital bill of 80,000 yuan nearly crushes the family, exposing the weakness of the existing medical safety net.
After graduating from Northeast Agricultural University at 24, Lin Xiaoman gives up a high-paying job in the provincial capital and returns to her hometown as a selected graduate recruited under the “Top University Graduate” program, taking up the post of first secretary stationed in the village. The launch of the Binjiang Province Rural Revitalization Five-Year Plan (2024–2028) coincides with her return. Inspired by the vision of “boosting agriculture through technology and empowering it through culture,” she is determined to overcome the region's industrial dead ends and livelihood challenges on this storied black soil, and write a new chapter in revitalization for her generation.
