Life Behind Bars

To outsiders, middle-aged Tan Miao is a model woman with a halo of virtues: a good Party member, doctor, daughter, wife, mother, daughter-in-law, and subordinate. But after taking part in a consumer promotion four years ago, she accidentally fell into a carefully engineered criminal trap. Her childhood sweetheart of a husband and their clever, well-behaved daughter do everything they can to clear her name: they appeal, petition, hire a famous lawyer, search for witnesses, and turn to the media. Every effort fails. Unable to accept the cruel reality, her husband falls into depression and dies of cancer. Their daughter nearly ends up in prison herself, sent away for “reeducation.” After five years behind bars, Tan Miao experiences the darkest period of her life, enduring a tremendous fall in her standard of living, upheaval in her family, and cruel tests of human nature, until she is finally released after serving her sentence. With her family shattered and the future unknown, where will she go from here? The true direction has, in fact, always been hidden in the lines of her palm.