The story follows Li Haitao as he returns to a place he first set foot in forty years ago to attend a conference. Back then, he was a soldier in the People’s Liberation Army, and he fell in love with Qin Weihua, the daughter of his battalion political instructor, who later became deputy political commissar of the Armed Forces Department. The story also unfolds around Xie Ying, the daughter of a deputy county magistrate who worked as a telegraph operator in the post office’s telegraph department, and Xu Ling, the daughter of the former chief of the County Public Security Bureau’s public order division. All three women scheme in their efforts to win Li Haitao. In the end, he leaves without offending any of them and without marrying a single one. How will these people, no longer young, fare when they meet again forty years after their love story began? The story also offers a multifaceted view of the complicated emotions of real life.
