In the autumn of the thirty-fourth year of Guangxu's reign, the river port of Jiangling, a small town in the south of the Yangtze River, was torn apart by the first whistle. The railway track will pass between Daolang and the ancestral hall, and extend to Haimen along the mudflats, Qiufu and Xiangyao. Some people say it is the fire dragon of the foreigners, which will swallow the dragon veins of the ancestors; some people say it is the ladder leading to the new world, which will bring the rice from the south to the north and the coal from the north to the south. Qu Yunzhou, an engineering draftsman who returned from Tianjin New Deal School, carries rolls of blueprints on his shoulders, but has to deal with bamboo craftsmen, Taoist priests and British engineers on the yellow muddy ground of the county government office. Liu Suqiu, a teacher at a local girls' school and a newspaper writer, carries a bulky photo case and notebook, shuttles between the work shed and the ancestral hall, using words to fight against tabloids, bans and ridicule. There is also Li Baotian, a veteran who worked hard at the Kaiping Mining Bureau ten years ago. The calluses in his hands are thicker than the sleepers. He believes that the railway tracks will help his son study, but he also knows that behind every explosion, there may be a price of a life. This is the story of how railroad tracks fell from paper to dirt, carving new and old cracks in hearts and lands. When the times turn, who can stand firm and who will be swept away by the dust? Between the whistle and the gongs and drums, between the whitewashed wall and the gray rice bowl, people are struggling and making choices. Chapter ten unfolds the construction of the Jiangling-Haimen Railway, laying out the intertwined texture of power, money and desire, and portraying the fragility, stubbornness and tenderness of people.
