By the Yellow River, I Adopted a Fallen Hero's Orphan

In 1938, in Shiwa Village beside the old course of the Yellow River, my name is Sun Guilan, and I have just married Chen Shitou, a stonemason. One stormy night, two “outsiders” knock on the door of my earthen house. The woman gives birth to a baby girl on the kang. Before leaving, the man, a revolutionary named Li Jianhua, entrusts the infant to me. “Elder Sister, this child is more precious than either of our lives.”

That promise lasts a lifetime. I name the girl Xiaoyu and raise her as my own. But fate is cruel. A few years later, Shitou dies while helping control the Yellow River floods, leaving me a widow to raise Xiaoyu alone. During the famine, I secretly stash away dried sweet potatoes and drink watery soup thin enough to reflect my face, but I never once consider giving up. After the founding of New China, Xiaoyu's birth mother, Su Mei, comes to take her back to the provincial capital. It is the hardest thing I have ever had to give up. Gritting my teeth, I tell Xiaoyu, who is crying her eyes out, “Go with her. You'll have a future.”

The earthen house is empty, and so is my heart. Then Lin Yuan, a young city-educated man sent to the countryside, comes to live with me and warms my heart with his sincerity. I tell him about the Yellow River, about Shitou, and about the promise I made that rainy night. He cries and says, “Grandma, from now on, I'll be your own grandson.”

Time surges onward, and the village is slated for relocation. A bulldozer is about to tear down the earthen house I have guarded all my life. Lin Yuan rushes back to record one last image of the old home. The keepsakes I have hidden for a lifetime, Li Jianhua's pocket watch and Xiaoyu's baby hair, are moved to the new village's “Memory Exhibition Hall,” and I become the storyteller who keeps these memories alive.