Back to the Xing'an Mountains in 1982: A Hunter Who Dotes on His Wife

[Rebirth to Atone for Past Sins · Hunting and Turning the Tables · A Father's Love as Steady as a Mountain · Period Piece]

Authentic hunting details + a vivid portrait of Northeast folk customs + fierce family conflict + nuanced emotional growth

On a bitterly cold night in 1982, deep in the Greater Khingan Mountains, impoverished forest ranger Liu Zhenjun drinks himself to death in regret, only to be reborn in the depths of winter, while his wife and daughters are still alive and tragedy has yet to begin.

In his previous life, because his wife gave birth to nine daughters and no sons, he treated her and the girls with coldness and cruelty, shackled by his preference for boys. He was set on adopting his nephew to care for him in his old age, but ended up with a dead wife, scattered daughters, and a miserable twilight years. When he opens his eyes again, his ninth daughter has just been born. His biased parents and scheming older brother and sister-in-law are pressuring him to adopt a son, while the whole village waits to laugh at this supposedly sonless family.

In this life, he wipes away his tears and grabs a woodcutter's knife, starting his comeback by taking on his entire family. He uses a slingshot to hunt rabbits and improve their meals, catches a pig in a trap to earn his first fortune, risks his life collecting honey on a cliff, and sells sable pelts for a sky-high price. The crack of his Shui Lianzhu hunting rifle rings through the forest. Wild boars, black bears, and wolf packs all become the means by which he supports his family and builds a livelihood.

His nine daughters receive poetic names and take their seats in classrooms that once seemed beyond their reach. His gentle, resilient wife finally smiles under his clumsy care. Everyone who ever bullied and humiliated him, from his biased parents and vicious older brother and sister-in-law to his ungrateful nephew, the village thugs, and the commune's local toughs, will witness the reborn hunter's decisive, thunderous methods.

This is a hunting epic rooted in the black soil of the north, and also the tearful tale of a man seeking redemption. See how Liu Zhenjun uses his hunting rifle and his wits to support his wife and daughters in the snowy forests and wilderness of the Greater Khingan Mountains in the 1980s, writing a family legend of "Nine Phoenixes Facing the Sun."