The story takes place in "Qi Town", an ancient water town in the south of the Yangtze River from the 1940s to the 1970s. The story revolves around Shen Wangdi, the last generation of boat girl in town, her adopted son Shuisheng, and the family of Gu Qingrang, a descendant of a scholarly family who moved from Shanghai. Taking "Liu Xi", a tributary of the canal, as its axis, it depicts the life, death, love, parting and watching of a number of small characters such as a boatman, a rice shop, a teahouse, and a private school teacher. During the silent ebb and flow of the times, some people tried their best to catch something, while others quietly turned into pebbles at the bottom of the river. The novel uses line drawing to describe the movement of boats on water, the ups and downs of the world, and the unspoken feelings that eventually end up in the silent flowing water.
Reader comments
There is a kind of melancholy beauty, reading it slowly makes people calm!
This is everyone's family, small things, such as the flowing water on the small bridge in the south of the Yangtze River, even and slow...
There is a kind of melancholy beauty, reading it slowly makes people calm! This is everyone's family, small things, such as the flowing water on the small bridge in the south of the Yangtze River, even and slow...