Taking the official ecology of Jingzhou City, a southern province, as the background, it tells the story of Lin Chen, a Ph. D. In economics from a poor family, who started as a grassroots cadre and gradually moved into the core of power with his solid political achievements and idealistic beliefs.
Jingzhou is located on the coast, and opportunities and various challenges coexist during the reform process: the collusion between government and businessmen behind the land acquisition dispute in the development zone, the transfer of interests in the reconstruction of the old city, and the factional strife during personnel adjustments, forming an airtight power network. With the original intention of "serving as an official and benefiting one party", Lin Chen tried to protect the rights and interests of landless farmers during demolition and resettlement, and curbed the expansion of polluting enterprises during industrial transformation, but he repeatedly ran into the red line of vested interest groups.
He must not only deal with the suspicion and exploitation of his immediate boss, but also beware of the overt and covert attacks of his colleagues; he must not only find space for survival in complex factional struggles, but also must endure "untimely" isolation while sticking to the bottom line. From the township to the municipal bureau, from the city to the province, every step of Lin Chen's promotion was accompanied by sacrifices - his best friend was forced to resign for exposing the shady story, his confidante was involved in the power struggle and became a pawn, and even his family was repeatedly threatened. When he finally got close to the position where he could realize his ambition, he found that he was already in the desperate situation of "either join the trend or be swallowed up by the torrent".
Through Lin Chen's twenty years of ups and downs in officialdom, the novel tears apart the erosion of "hidden rules" against "explicit rules" and the tear between ideals and reality in modern officialdom. It shows how a good official who wants to do things for the people struggles, perseveres and compromises in the whirlpool of power, and ultimately asks: In the turbid reality, do idealists really have no way out?
