This is an epic story about ordinary people that spans half a century and features Lin Xiu'e, an orphan girl of the Lin family, as the protagonist.
In the rolling torrent of revolution, Xiu'e, who is indifferent to worldly affairs, will inevitably become the most guilty person in history. Her fate will make her live a difficult life and test her strong will. Nine-year-old Xiu'e, her siblings and her grandmother lived in a dilapidated shack. Grandma begged and Xiu'e dug wild vegetables, but it was still hard to ward off hunger and cold. The younger sister was taken away by her aunt, and the younger brother Huaiyuan became disabled due to high fever. When her grandmother died of illness, Xiu'e vowed to keep her family, raise her younger brother, and survive.
She was taken in by the Zhang family, a martyr from a neighboring village, as a domestic worker and exchanged needlework for food rations, but insisted on sneaking back to the ruins every day to deliver food to Huaiyuan. Zhang Jianguo, Zhang's eldest son, secretly helped her, and Xiu'e eventually married into the Zhang family and gave birth to three sons and two daughters. With an iron will, she protected her children during famine, the Cultural Revolution, and political liquidation: she secretly taught and mended textbooks at night, and used her status as a "martyr" as a shield to fight for the opportunity for her children to study.
The story ends with the descendants of the Lin family and the Zhang family achieving great achievements in their respective fields: Xiaofeng became an internationally renowned scientist, Xiaoyu was a top cardiac surgeon, and the bloodlines of the Zhang and Lin families merged into a torrent in the new era. As Xiu'e said - "The duckweed has roots, and the bloodline is eternal."
