In the northern plains of 963, the wind always carried the dry smell of wheat straw. Nineteen-year-old Lin Yanqiu followed the team that jumped in line to the Red Star Production Brigade. She was wrapped in a blue cloth shirt that had been washed white, and her cloth shoes were stained with loess, but she could not hide the bookishness in her eyes that had not been worn away - that was the only "thought" she brought from the city that had not been confiscated.
Chen Wangshu, the reporter in the team, came two years before her. He is as silent as an old elm tree on the field ridge, and his palms are covered with thick calluses, but he can draw the pictures in the "Tractor Maintenance Manual" more accurately than anyone else under the kerosene lamp in the middle of the night. The first time he saw Lin Yanqiu was when she was squatting on the edge of the field, vomiting so hard that she couldn't straighten up, holding half a hard piece of cornstarch in her hand, with tears still hanging on her eyelashes.
In those days, love was a luxury product, a noise other than "composition", "work points" and "originality". They shared a secret piece of sweet potato behind the haystack in the threshing floor, and gave a silent comfort with their eyes to the crowd at the struggle meeting. By the water channel at minus 20 degrees, he put his only cotton-padded jacket on her shoulders, and his lips turned purple from the cold.
Later, she was recommended to attend the Workers', Peasants and Soldiers University, but he was stranded in the village because of "family history issues"
