In 2006, Lin Yan, a young man from a rural area in southern Hunan, made a promise to his old party secretary: "I want to make my hometown better."
In 2013, he secretly submitted his sales resume in an 80-square-meter rental house with his newborn child in his arms. Surrounded by a baby waiting to be fed, behind him was the shaky winter of the industry, and in his hands were illegal plans that had been revised countless times - that night, he almost gave up.
These are three generations of people born in the 1980s who pooled together the down payment to buy a house. These are the new citizens who have taken root in urban villages for ten years. They are the idealists who have been crushed by the chaos of the industry and have gritted their teeth to get back up.
From a painter with a monthly salary of 2,000, to a lone warrior who reported collusion between government and business; from a father preparing for the exam with his child carrying textbooks, to an industry developer who wrote rural planning concepts into provincial standards - Lin Yan spent ten years to complete the counterattack from countryside to blueprint.
But this is not a cool story. Here are the first nights of tendering and bidding, the drunkenness after being robbed of a project, the wife's words "you only have work in mind" after being stationed in the countryside for several months, the anxiety of choosing a school for junior high school students, and the battle of ideas between an old man and a baby.
This is the real life of a generation: buying a house, having children, changing jobs, starting a business, raising children, and balancing. In the days when his ideals were repeatedly beaten by reality, what kept him from turning around and leaving?
Open this book, and you will see that the man who was holding his child and reading books in the living room late at night finally lived the way he wanted.
Dedicated to all those who stick to their ideals in the cracks of reality.
