Linjiang City in the north is still wrapped in a thin layer of chill. The ice on the moat has just melted. The ice fragments are slowly drifting away along the current, just like those thoughts that have not yet had time to be expressed. There are still few colorful clothes on the streets. Most people are wearing gray, blue and black cloth. The jingle of bicycle bells can be heard throughout the city. The wooden doors of state-owned stores creak. The walls are painted with red slogans of "Reform and Opening Up" and "Hard work and get rich", which roll up and down when the wind blows.
This is an era of alternation between old and new.
A large number of educated youths have returned to the city, factories have restarted operations, and in the third year since the college entrance examination was resumed, countless young people are holding books in their arms, as if they are holding all the hope of changing their destiny. Some people are hammering steel in factories, some are cultivating hope on the field ridges, some are writing furiously in classrooms, and some are secretly setting up stalls on the streets - everything is waking up, everything is waiting, and everything is quietly undergoing earth-shaking changes.
The story of Gu Zhengnan and Zhu Xiaobei officially begins in this gray but vibrant town.
