In the winter of 1978, Cheng Hewen, a young man from northern Shaanxi, receives a letter from Beijing. The writer, Feng Jiayou, is an educated youth who returned to the city and got into university. The letter says little: she is pregnant with his child and has decided to terminate the pregnancy.
Cheng Hewen has no time to think. Clutching a letter of introduction, he squeezes onto a train and races all the way to Beijing. At the Feng family home, he stops Feng Jiayou just as her mother is about to force her to go to the hospital. With the deed already done, this “country bumpkin son-in-law” from northern Shaanxi is reluctantly accepted and moves into the Feng family’s cramped courtyard home.
The Fengs are a typical family of Beijing intellectuals. His mother-in-law is the editor-in-chief of October magazine and finds fault with her rural son-in-law at every turn. His father-in-law is taciturn, but watches him in secret. His sister-in-law is quick-witted and mischievous, eagerly awaiting a chance to laugh at him. His elder sister-in-law, unable to conceive for years, quietly sets her sights on the child Feng Jiayou is carrying.
No one suspects that this “country bumpkin” hides another soul within him. He dazzles the entire family by scoring nearly full marks on a set of university entrance exam review questions. Late at night, he picks up his pen and writes a novel, The Horse Herder, then sends it to Yanjing Literature, a rival publication to his mother-in-law’s magazine.
The pronouns look messy, and sometimes I can't tell who is talking.