It is a rural emotional epic spanning half a century, telling the story of Li Zhenbang's reconciliation with his destiny in the torrent of the times. When Peking was liberated in 1949, college student Li Zhenbang was forced to break off his relationship with his lover Su Wanqing and return to the Loess Plateau to marry Chen Qiulan, whom he had never met. The birth of six children, the life and death test of the Great Famine, and the separate growth of their children have forged this couple into a silent but tenacious life community. When the younger daughter who returned from studying abroad pried open the sandalwood box that had been dusty for fifty years, the letter from Peking that had never been opened and read finally gently stitched together two loves that had been crushed by the times in the echoes of her old age.
