This is a story about cities and people's hearts, starting from the Jiangnan Wharf in the 17th year of the Republic of China, and ending in Southwest City where the mountains echoed during the war. Du Huaian, a newspaper editor who drifted from Hewan Town to Shanghai, writes to make a living, writes to seek truth, and writes to survive. He mingled under the warm yellow kerosene lamp of the newspaper office, at the entrance of the noisy textile factory, and with the sound of flower drums and cymbals on the theater overpass. He saw how the crowd wandered between slogans and hunger, and saw how the powerful appeased their consciences with sneers and golden tickets. Lin Qing, a leading actress of the New Drama Club, with cloud-like costumes and dagger-like eyes, plays love and death on stage, and fights fate with silence off stage. Zhao Yiyang, an almost modern industrialist, talks about his ideals and hides his abacus in his sleeves; and police detective Li Yucheng, who is chilled by the night wind, grasps the smallest movements in the shadows of the city, but cannot forget which alley he came out of. As the waves of social change roll into the city, these people become mirrors of each other, see each other, and tear each other apart. Love and guilt, ideals and survival, fall like dust every morning and dusk. This book does not talk about fantasy, only about reality; it does not talk about miracles, only about the glimmer of human hearts in the cracks of history. Each chapter is an echo of the sound of the tide crashing on the shore.
