This is a historical novel centered on Fengqiao, a small town in the south of the Yangtze River, spanning more than 20 years from the late Qing Dynasty to the early Republic of China. After the defeat of the Sino-Japanese War, a family that started out as a silk and salt class was on the verge of collapse. Gu Xingzhi, a young man struggling to study between an old-style private school and a new-style academy, witnessed the change of dynasties, warlords' melee and the rise and fall of new ideas from the Suzhou study room to the railway construction site to the corridor of the county council. Intertwined with his life are Shen Ling, who was pushed to widowhood by fate, a woman who was bound by customs but sewed a new way in her sewing stitches; Wang Zhaoheng, an engineer who returned from Japan; Cheng Bainian, a newspaperman who used his pages to confront the military and police in Shanghai; and Lu Zhankui, who played a decisive role between the county government and the military camp. The whistle of the railway, the ink of the newspaper office, the slogans of the meeting hall and the bells and drums of the rural ancestral hall restrain each other, forming a subtle and real texture of an era. At Fengqiao Ferry, where the south wind does not cross, the emotional entanglements between people and the game between society and individuals are like the slow movement of the river, and the swimmers may sink or float. The story is not a heroic epic, but a quiet biography for those who left their footprints in the mud.
