A home is more than a vessel of steel and concrete. It is a stage for the tides of an era, the many faces of humanity, and the passions of love and hate. One woman's growth is tightly interwoven with the rise and fall of an industry. An ordinary person steps into a vast world, struggling to survive in the mud and finding light amid the chaos.
Lin Xiaosui is nineteen, from a remote mountain village in the south called Qingshui'ao. Her mother disappeared when she was a child, leaving no trace. Her father drinks and gambles, and the family is desperately poor. She steals a few hundred yuan in "emergency money" that her father has hidden at the bottom of a trunk, then takes a two-day hard-seat train to Haishi, clinging to a faint hope of learning what became of her mother and dreaming of the city. Penniless and with no one to turn to, she has her luggage stolen at the train station on her very first day. She scrapes by with odd jobs, working as a restaurant waitress and a hair-washing girl at a salon. One day, she spots a blurry job notice on a utility pole: "Anjule Real Estate Agency hiring sales agents. No education requirements. High commission. Meals and lodging provided." Those eight words feel like a lifeline, giving her the courage to push open the shabby glass door.
