Four Lines to Home

From 1938 to 1945, in a county somewhere in North China.

Four ordinary people who had never met, the mute hunter Xiao Lang from the mountains, Tang Weizhen, a medicine merchant branded a "traitor," village blacksmith Zhao Tiechui, and Lao Liang, the proprietor of a general store, each struggle to survive the raging war against Japan. Their fates are quietly woven together through a peddler's pack, a Japanese officer's butcher's blade, and the sacrifice of an underground Party member.

Eight years of war, four years lying in wait. When the Japanese launch their final, frenzied campaign to "wipe out the resistance," the four finally meet under the guidance of the organization. To their astonishment, they discover they have long been connected by invisible threads: the knife Tiechui forged saved Xiao Lang's life; the herbs Xiao Lang gathered passed through Lao Liang's hands and saved wounded guerrillas; the intelligence Lao Liang relayed helped Tang Weizhen escape disaster; and the medicine Tang Weizhen sent saved Tiechui's fellow villagers.

He is mute, but also the deadliest hunter in the mountains.

He is a traitor, but also an undercover courier passing along intelligence.

He is a blacksmith, but also a supporter of the resistance, forging weapons in the heat of his furnace.

He is a shopkeeper, but also a watchman who waits eight long years to pass on a coded signal.

They have never met, yet on the same stretch of land, each fights the same enemy in his own way.

From strangers to comrades willing to entrust one another with their lives, these four little people each play their part, hunting, disguising, forging, and keeping watch, to carry out a collective hunt for the invaders on the very same land.

This is an epic of resistance about the unsung and unknown.