From 1951 to 1956, Jiangcheng.
Her name was Zhou Wan. She was born in a poor peasant family and was a secretary of the Federation of Trade Unions. She hated everyone who wore a long gown - because underneath that gown was her sister's nineteen-year-old exhausted life.
His name is Song Qingyan, a capitalist young master who graduated from Cambridge. His father has just been shot. He should have hated everything she stood for, but instead he just smiled, like a dry well.
These are mortal enemies of two classes, swept into the same factory by the tide of public-private partnership. She stared at his every move, trying to find unwillingness and hatred in his eyes; he looked at her back and found that he had remembered all the details about her - including the ones she didn't know she cared about.
There is no love between them, only hate. But hate to the extreme is more like love than love.
This is a story about "hate". Hate is more durable than love, sharper than love, and closer to the truth of that era than love.
