In the Jiangnan water town at the end of the Qing Dynasty and the beginning of the Republic of China, Lin Wanzhi, a fisherman girl, was sent to the wealthy "Baishui Shen family" in the city by her parents because of her family's financial difficulties. In fact, she was clinging to distant relatives to make a living. Shen Shitang, the young master of the Shen family, is a suave and charming man who seduces Qingli Wanzhi step by step. Finally, when her father is critically ill, he uses financial aid as a bait to make her lose her virginity. After Wan Zhi returned to his hometown, he was spurned by his neighbors. Only his mother secretly wept.
A few years later, Wan Zhi moved to Shanghai to make a living, and met Chen Yuanshu, an editor who had returned from studying abroad, at Progressive Bookstore. The two fell in love because of their resonance with poetry and new ideas, and Yuan Shu proposed regardless of their family status. On their wedding night, Wan Zhi confessed the past, and Yuan Shu was shocked but promised to be tolerant. However, Shen Shitang suddenly appeared with evidence of the past, forcing Yuan Shu's family to put pressure on his wife.
After being abandoned, Wan Zhi drifted to work in a textile factory, but was retaliated by Shen Shitang (now the factory owner) because of the female workers' strike. In the end, in poverty and despair, Wan Zhi walked to the Baishui River beside Shenjia Pier, and Chen Yuanshu looked back on the wave of change, only to realize that he himself was also imprisoned by the times and his inner demons.
The story uses individual destiny as a needle to weave a long and sad scroll of the awakening of female dignity and humanity in an era of disintegration of old morality.
