The story centers on Chen Ye, a 28-year-old architectural designer. Once a promising rising star in the industry, he was falsely accused of plagiarism after a design mishap. He lost his job, and his girlfriend of five years, Su Qing, broke up with him under pressure from her family. Disillusioned, Chen Ye left the major city where he worked and returned to his hometown, Jiangcheng. He rented an old house with a loft in the old town and barely scraped by taking odd design jobs. He drifted through life, with even the design books he once treasured locked away at the bottom of a box.
The new owner of the house is Lin Xi, a 30-year-old investor who returned from overseas. She spent years working on Wall Street, but when her father suddenly fell gravely ill, she gave up her high-paying job and returned to China to take over the family’s near-bankrupt cultural tourism project. She also wanted to escape the deceitful office politics. Lin Xi bought the old house to fulfill her father’s dying wish to “restore the historic buildings in the old town.” She seems cool-headed, capable, and stern, but beneath the surface she harbors guilt over her father and is exhausted by the fast pace of life.
