In 1977, at Kaoshan Village, international negotiation expert Lin Zhiyao transmigrates into Lin Wanxing, an orphan sent down to the countryside who is unloved by her parents and being forced into marriage by her uncle and aunt. The moment she opens her eyes, she is beaten and framed. With just a few words, she reads people and turns the tables on her scheming relatives, only to stumble upon a plot by enemy agents targeting the “counterrevolutionary” living in the east of the village.
That man, Lu Zhian, appears to be a down-and-out intellectual, but is in fact a nationally treasured engineer developing defense generators. The scars on his left hand tell of a lifetime devoted to research. Taciturn but protective, he quietly watches over everyone around him. Lin Zhiyao wields a sent-down youth’s diary as a weapon and uses modern negotiation techniques to unravel the dilemmas of the era. She spots a mole in the commune through microexpressions, defuses a struggle-session crisis with political rhetoric, and rallies villagers to protect classified information with homespun tactics.
Coarse-grain flatbread, a shabby house, and spy shadows flickering in the lamplight: the two first forge an alliance over roasted sweet potatoes late at night, then join forces to destroy an enemy communications post. In an age of scarcity, they build equipment from scrap and use psychological tactics to overcome peril. The uncle and aunt repent, the young people awaken, and the whole village bands together to defend their homeland. Through cooperation with neighboring villages and the founding of businesses, Kaoshan Village transforms from a poor backwater into a model of prosperity.
There is no golden finger, only the wisdom to plan every step. There is no saccharine romance detached from reality, only the steadfastness of two people who support each other through thick and thin. When the wave of sent-down youths returning to the cities arrives and an order from the capital comes, they choose to put down roots in the countryside, letting their dream of serving the nation through technology bloom in the fields and passing their devotion to protecting home and country from generation to generation. This is a silent struggle hidden in the countryside of the 1970s, and a legendary tale of home and country written with sincerity and courage.
