This is an intertwined history of family and era centered on a small town in the south of the Yangtze River and Shanghai. In the more than thirty years from the aftermath of the Sino-Japanese War of 1894 to the beginning of the war, scholars, female factory workers, merchants, military officers, widowed landowners and other figures made their own choices in the undercurrent of history: some lit the stove and started a school, some embarked on the ferry to the city, some held guns to guard the granary, and some sold their dowries in exchange for tomorrow. The bluestones of the town and the neon lights of Shanghai reflect people's hearts and the times. One wave after another brings away old people and brings in new names. There is love, betrayal, well-intentioned little calculations and rough kindness between them; there is obsession with new learning, and there is also inertia towards the laws of the ancestors. The sound of the tide fell into my dream, and when I woke up, the world had changed.
