"Sorrow and Joy in the Valley" tells the story of the growth and redemption of Song Cheng, a biopharmaceutical doctor. Born in a poor mountain village, he witnessed his grandmother pass away in pain on a wicker chair as a child due to late-stage liver cancer and no money for treatment. When he was a teenager, his grandfather died in a construction site accident. When he was in high school, his father died in a car accident, and the family was hit hard. These hardships planted an obsession in his heart - to be admitted to a medical university and research drugs to cure terminal diseases.
After graduating from his Ph. D., Song Cheng stayed at school to participate in the research and development of targeted cancer drugs, devoting all his energy to this research that could rewrite the fate of countless families. However, just when the drug entered the clinical stage, his mother was diagnosed with terminal liver cancer, which made him once again face the heartbreaking pain of "a loved one suffering".
From the ravine to the laboratory, Song Cheng was torn between ideals and reality: he not only had to overcome difficulties in scientific research, but also faced the difficult choices in his mother's treatment; he not only had to break away from the painful memories of his hometown, but he was always tied down by family ties and roots. In the end, he optimized the drug with thoughts of his loved ones, making the targeted drug both effective and patient-friendly, and named it "Nian Ci" to comfort the deceased.
The novel uses Song Cheng's life trajectory to connect the joys and sorrows of the countryside with the warmth of science, explores the shaping of ideals by suffering, and the game between knowledge and destiny. Finally, in "healing others" and "reconciling the past", it interprets the most tenacious power of life - those indelible pains will eventually turn into light that illuminates the way forward.
