In the late 1980s, Lin Wei, a gentle and tough southern girl, moved to Beicheng, a northern industrial city, with her family. After joining a textile factory, she met Chen Yang, a technician at a steel factory, and they became acquainted with each other in the fireworks market. After experiencing family prejudice and the wave of layoffs, the two started a business together - Lin Wei started from a tailor shop and built "Weiyang Clothing" into a well-known clothing brand, while Chen Yang was deeply involved in the machinery industry and led the factory to complete the transformation and upgrading.
As time goes by, they must not only balance career and family, face challenges such as entrepreneurial difficulties, health crises, and market competition, but also resolve family ties and intergenerational conflicts: support their younger brother Lin Qiang to start a business and grow up, take care of their sick mother-in-law, and guide their adolescent daughter out of rebellion. The changes in the world when old friends reunite, the dilemma of mid-life choices, and the affectionate persistence of supporting each other run through their decades of life.
The novel takes the changing times as the background and focuses on the various aspects of ordinary people's lives. It not only depicts the signs of the times such as laid-off and re-employment, the wave of entrepreneurship, and the rise of the Internet after the reform and opening up, but also writes about the increasingly mellow love between Lin Wei and Chen Yang in the same boat through thick and thin, as well as the warmth of tolerance and understanding in the family, showing the warmth of fireworks and the power of life accumulated over the years.
