At the end of the Qing Dynasty and the beginning of the Republic of China, under the stone bridge in a small town in the south of the Yangtze River, there was a mixed smell of rotting river mud, burnt lamp oil and the noise of the crowd. Shen Ruochen, who came from a scholarly family, saw a broader and more complex world in the bloody light of a public execution. He walked from the private school to the newspaper office, from his home to the street, and wrote down the cold looks and bitter cries of the spectators. Guo Lanhua, a female silk factory worker whose feet were bound three inches, lost her companions in a lamp oil fire. She endured the pain to escape and resist, and learned to speak amidst the roar of machines in Shanghai. Wu Zhen, who was born in the Hubei New Army, stepped towards the edge of power and responsibility amidst the gunfire of the times. There were smiles at the banquet, and he turned around and made a bloody choice. There is also Li Yuxin, a female doctor who has returned from studying abroad. Hidden under her white clothes is a harsh observation of the world and human nature. The tram of fate rubs sharply on the track. They are united by changes and separated by choices. Ten years of ups and downs, wind and thunder on paper, their love and hate, loyalty and suspicion, failure and establishment, between the gunfire and street lights, gradually overlapped to form a portrait of the times. There are no miracles or adventures, only the ups and downs of people's hearts and social changes, growing in the real soil.
