In 1976, Guilan leaves the countryside to join her older sister, who has married and moved to the county town. Washing dishes and emptying slop buckets in a restaurant kitchen, she gets her first taste of earning a living with her own hands, and her first glimpse of a different kind of life in town.
In 1977, she passes a cotton mill and sees the workers in blue uniforms and caps, filing in and out in orderly rows to the sound of the bell. At that moment, she swears to herself: I want to work at the factory and become a permanent employee.
From muddy country lanes to the roaring factory floor, from longing for a hot meal to yearning for a stable job, Guilan's life is a portrait of the countless Chinese women who struggled, persevered, and sought to find themselves amid the tides of their times.
This is the life of an ordinary person, and a glimpse of days gone by that can never return.
