The story of Phoenix Splendor is the story of two ordinary people.
Wang Fengming and Cao Minghua.
Born in the final years of the Qing dynasty and raised in the Republican era, they lived through the War of Resistance, the civil war, the revolution, and the War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea.
They lost their homes, lost loved ones, were separated, and fell into despair.
Yet they never betrayed each other.
One phoenix jade pendant, and one hua jade pendant.
One promise: “I’ll protect you.” Another: “I’ll wait for you.”
From Changli in Hebei to the Yunnan army, from an isolated Changchun to the frozen wastes of Korea, and then to a military camp in the Northeast.
Thousands of miles apart, separated for eighteen years.
Apart, but never parted; never forgotten.
This book has no cries of heroism, only the quiet perseverance of everyday life;
no earth-shattering plot, only the kindness, integrity, and loyalty etched into the bones of the Chinese people.
They are dust, wild grass, the faintest glimmers between mountains and rivers.
But gathered together, those glimmers become the backbone of a nation.
Open this book, and what you see is not history,
but the real lives our grandparents lived.
It is the wish to win one heart and stay together until old age.
It is a promise worth a thousand pieces of gold, never broken, even in death.
It is a land in ruins, but hearts that remain whole.
It is Phoenix Splendor, a life without regrets.
