The Iron-Boned Scavenger

Synopsis of The Iron-Boned Scavenger

In 1949, in a remote village in Henan, lived a taciturn old scavenger known as “Old Blackhead.” He lived in a leaky shack and made his living collecting scrap, yet he always gave the village children candy. His eyes held stories beyond telling. In 1978, three Beijing Jeeps suddenly pulled into the village, revealing his true identity: Xiao Yunfeng, a Kuomintang officer who had graduated from the seventh class of the Whampoa Military Academy and had been a classmate of the famous anti-Japanese general Sun Liren.

After the Liaoshen Campaign, unwilling to see his countrymen kill one another, Xiao Yunfeng went into hiding and drifted through civilian life under an assumed name. He had no idea that his beloved wife, Lin Wanqing, had fled to Taiwan amid the chaos of war, believing he had died. For fifty years, she kept half of a jade pendant and raised their son, Lin Siyun, to become a military engineer. Meanwhile, Xiao searched through piles of scrap for the smallest scraps of news about Taiwan, finding solace in his memories.

In their twilight years, fate finally took pity on the couple torn apart by war. Using declassified records from both sides of the Taiwan Strait, their son Lin Siyun crossed the sea to find his father, bringing along weapon designs his father had never managed to put into production and the family letters his mother had treasured. At last, the love that had been separated for half a century found its happy ending. After Xiao Yunfeng passed away, Lin Siyun used composite armor material of his own design to bury his parents’ ashes together, making their love as enduring as the country they had devoted themselves to.

This is an epic about war and peace, forgetting and remembering, and heartbreak and reunion, set against the fate of a nation.

The shack of an old scavenger holds half the history of the War of Resistance; a longing that crossed the strait bears witness to the resilience and deep affection of the Chinese people.