The Red Hair Ribbon Beneath the Waves of Wheat

Along the ridges between wheat fields in Dongguang County, Cangzhou, life was as rutted as the dirt roads, but neighborly ties ran thicker than aged liquor.

Wang Xiaojun, the son of an oil miller, falls for Li Hongxia, the village secretary’s daughter. Their wedding brings thirty years of old debts spilling out: Widow Liu has old love letters pressed beneath the bottom of her cabinet; Sun Laohan’s son nearly drops out of school because they can’t afford his five-thousand-yuan operation; schoolteacher Zhao Wenbin’s pay is always late; and the poverty-relief funds meant for the village secretary’s family have been squandered by his own son…

There are no saints here, only ordinary people struggling to get by. The greedy can show kindness, the lecherous can repent, and those who hold grudges can still lend a hand. Beneath the firecrackers at weddings and funerals, there’s both calculation and warmth. Beneath life’s uncertainty, with its births, aging, sickness, and death, one thing refuses to be crushed: the stubborn drive to keep pushing forward as long as you’re alive.

Red Ribbons Beneath the Waves of Wheat isn’t a pastoral idyll. It’s real life, caked in dirt, pricked with wheat awns, and fragrant with the smell of the oil mill. Follow these men and women as they put down deep roots amid all their cursing and warm their hearts with laughter.

Open this book and you’ll smell the hearth back home, hear the coarse jokes of the neighbors, and remember the hometown you once wanted to escape but can never return to.

Folks from Dongguang, this book has your father’s drunken truths, your mother’s smoky iron ladle, your childhood friend’s embarrassing stories, and the homesickness you don’t even dare admit you feel.