On a spring night in 1974, Su Wanqing, a Shanghai girl, cried while holding her arm that was swollen by flea bites and wet her pillow towel. As one of the last batch of educated youth sent to the countryside, this girl who couldn't even tell the difference between leeks and wheat seedlings made a joke in Qingshan Village, Jiangxi, by feeding pigs with soap. Until the veteran Zhou Tiesheng, who always silently helped her pick out her labor share, hung a homemade mugwort insect repellent bag on her bedside.
In two years, he taught her to identify edible wild vegetables, and she read "How Steel Was Tempered" to him; he recited her treasured books in floods, and she mended patches on his military uniform for him under the oil lamp. When the tide of returning to the city came, Wan Qing discovered that those details of life that were ridiculed as "simple" - the sweet potatoes roasted red on the stove, the stars on the drying field, and the wooden hairpin he clumsily carved, had long become flesh and blood that he could not part with.
And the greater test has just begun. In order to stay, she gave up the opportunity to work for her mother; in order to be worthy of being a "literary person", Tiesheng ventured into the mountains to collect herbs and broke his ribs; when she unexpectedly got a place as a worker, peasant and soldier student, she received a breakup letter from him... At a time when the torrent of the times is threatening everyone's fate, how can these two stubborn souls protect the love that is not expected?
From the commune broadcaster to the backbone of the county agricultural technical station, from the "Iron Lady" who fought floods and rescued people to the female secretary of the ruling party, Su Wanqing spent thirty years proving that the choice under the sycamore tree was not only about love, but also a solemn answer about the value of life.
