The Windmill Spun Gently That Year

Setting: Rural inland villages and small towns in the mid-to-late 1990s

The village primary school where Zhao Xiaoping works is facing closure and consolidation. Determined to keep the children in school, she does everything she can to fight for them and meets Li Jianjun, who has come to promote literacy classes and agricultural technology night school. They go from misunderstanding each other to working side by side, setting up a joint school in an old warehouse. They teach the villagers to read and grow greenhouse vegetables, and, as they challenge conservative gentry and backward ideas, help bring modernization to the countryside. Along the way, they find a pure and heartfelt love.