In the bitter winter of 1990, a faint, kittenlike cry woke Chenjia'ao, a small village in northern China. The midwife declared that Chen Xiaomai “wouldn't be easy to raise,” casting a shadow over the impoverished farming family's joy at the birth of their first son. But his father, Chen Laosan, a stubborn man who worked the land, used the resilience of the soil and a farmer's sly humor to set this “weak seedling” straight.
This is an epic tale of a country boy's thirty-year struggle.
Volume One: Wild Grass on the Field Ridge (1990–2008)** Watch Chen Xiaomai grow up wild in the material scarcity of the 1990s! Chased by dogs after stealing sweet potatoes, blowing up outhouses with homemade rockets, catching cicada nymphs to pay his school fees... Amid the fragrant earth and the hardships of life, his father's conviction that “even a crooked seedling deserves support” and his mother's silent strength keep him stumbling forward toward the sun. At last, he becomes the county's top student and, with tuition money collected by the villagers in his pocket, ventures wide-eyed into the bustling city.
Volume Two: The Gears Begin to Turn (2008–2013)** College is no pastoral idyll. Short on cash, country boy Chen Xiaomai stumbles through one awkward, hilarious mishap after another, from getting the canteen bill wrong to accidentally walking into the women's bathhouse while delivering food. Hardship and hard work go hand in hand, with tears mingling with laughter. After graduation, he enters the workforce and learns the ropes at the grassroots level, discovering the complexity of human nature, encountering injustice, and finding close friends and a tentative first love. After five years of trials, he learns to use the wisdom he grew in the wheat fields to find his footing among the city's gears.
Volume Three: Deep Roots (2013–2030)** Chen Xiaomai enters government service and puts down roots in the bureaucratic jungle, carrying the weight of the soil with him. He faces the clash between ideals and reality, and the struggle between temptation and principle.
Very nice!