The Four Long Brothers

On a famine night in 1978, a bowl of porridge decided the fates of the four Long brothers. The eldest shouldered the family’s burdens but ended up living the most miserable life. The second put on a military uniform, only to have his career cut short by a background check. The third headed south to seek his fortune and came back covered in scars. Their mother burned the youngest’s university admission letter with her own hands.

Over the next forty years, they fought over dividing the family, bride prices, the mulberry orchard, property, their parents’ care, funeral expenses... again and again. They saw one roof beam sawn into four pieces, medicine bills calculated down to the last decimal place, a brawl at a funeral over five hundred yuan in condolence money, and agreements signed to never speak to one another again.

They weren’t bad people, just ordinary people made fearful by poverty and bent beneath the weight of their times. When their father forgot everyone’s name in the nursing home, when their mother died suddenly of a heart attack with no one by her side, when a brother fell ill and didn’t know whom to call... only then, at the end of their lives, did the family bonds buried beneath petty squabbles reveal their bloody truth.

This is a saga of survival about four men, two women, and one family. They spent half a lifetime in poverty and half in resentment, then, beneath the sunset over the mulberry orchard, raised four cups of wine to the earth: to their parents, to their brothers, and to their messy yet painfully real lives.

5. Recommendations

Editor’s recommendation: “More brutal than To Live, more true to life than A Lifelong Journey! Four brothers’ forty years of conflict and reconciliation lay bare the hidden pain and resilience of Chinese families.”

A reader’s perspective: “I was crying by the first chapter! This isn’t a novel. It’s the real life of my uncle, my father’s brothers, and all my other uncles.”