At the end of the Ming Dynasty and the beginning of the Qing Dynasty, the world was in chaos, and dynasties were changing like pages of a book. Song Dagui was originally a peasant man. His family was ruined due to the bandit rebellion, and he was displaced. On the road to refugee status, he met a group of low-level companions: Zhao Qiaoer, Li Changhe, Jiang Siniang, Chen Fushan, and Zhang Ziqing. Everyone uses humor and self-deprecation to resist suffering in their own story lines, looking for family, friendship, love and self-salvation. They either escape, struggle, or fight against power. The narratives in the three volumes interweave the path of growth and redemption. The first volume focuses on the migration of refugees and reveals the fate of the characters, the second volume shows the conflicts in troubled times and the self-rescue of small people, and the third volume tells the story of their respective destinations in the great era when Qing troops entered the country and the country changed hands, ending the humble but great epic.
