The Wind Watching Over the Strait is a heartfelt epic spanning half a century, delicately portraying the fate and devotion of a family divided between the two sides of the Taiwan Strait from a woman’s perspective. In 1949, Zhang Huaiyuan, the newlywed eldest son of the Zhang family, is forcibly conscripted and sent to Taiwan. He is hastily separated from his pregnant wife, Lin Xiulan, leaving her with only the words, “Wait for me to come back.” From then on, the strait divides life and death, but cannot sever a lifetime of longing.
On the mainland, Lin Xiulan endures the pain of losing a child amid turbulent times, yet raises her adopted son to adulthood with astonishing resilience, always keeping her promise to her husband. In Taiwan, Zhang Huaiyuan struggles to survive in solitude, pouring his homesickness into a little shop called Nostalgia Grocery, and never remarries. As the years pass, the winds of change finally arrive. Their grandchildren unexpectedly meet and fall in love in Taipei. When layers of the past are finally revealed, the blood ties spanning three generations are at last acknowledged.
After a lifetime of separation and bereavement, they are finally reunited in another way. This is a story of love, waiting, and return, like a wind that blows across the strait and, at last, finds its way back home.
