This is a spy novel of the Republic of China intertwined with the righteousness of family and country and affection. The story takes place in the turbulent Shanghai Island in 1937.
Sheng Qinghan, a wealthy girl who dropped out of St. John's University, appears to be a socialite in Paramount, but is actually an underground traffic officer codenamed "Minute Hand". She accidentally met Shen Huaijin at a jazz dance with Shen Huaijin, who was disguised as a youth gang leader and whose real identity was the traffic station master "Miao Zhen". The two used the customs clock to be slow for thirty seconds as a secret signal. They used cigarettes on the roof of the cotton factory to report that they were safe, and quietly approached in the troubled times.
However, there is an undercurrent beneath the sweet understanding. Sheng's father forced Qing Han to enter into a political marriage, and Zhongtong's undercover agents and Japanese agents pressed on him step by step. When the Marco Polo Bridge Incident broke out and the fall of Shanghai was imminent, the two people's mission and emotions were pushed to the extreme. Shen Huaijin planned the bell tower explosion to save Qing Han but was seriously injured and deafened. Qing Han was captured and imprisoned to protect him. In the final desperate mission, one of them drove an explosives boat to the Suzhou River Iron Bridge, and the other was tied to the bridge head as a hostage. When the Japanese army forcibly calibrated the customs bell, they completed the final dance and farewell with their lives.
The story ends with an open ending. The explosion slowed down the bells and left a lingering sound of hope. In the extreme pull of sweetness and cruelty, faith and love are like the never-precise bells on the Bund, carving eternal echoes in the long river of history.
