1. Story Synopsis
Lin Yuan grew up at the foot of the walls of Dengzhou, and in the eyes of everyone in his village, he was the “descendant of a traitor.”
Eighty years ago, during the battle to liberate Deng County, his great-grandfather Lin Dashuan “defected to the enemy,” causing an entire company of comrades to die. Ever since, the Lin family had been branded with shame: their ancestral graves were smashed, their old home seized, and when Lin Yuan was a boy, he wasn't even allowed into the village school, because “a traitor's seed doesn't deserve an education.”
Lin Yuan worked hard to get into university in Beijing and study architectural history, hoping to get as far from Dengzhou as possible. Then one day, his mother called. “They dug up a brick at the foot of the city wall. Your great-grandfather's name is carved on it. The villagers say it's proof of the traitor's guilt. They want to smash it and throw it in the river.”
Lin Yuan knew that if the brick were smashed, the Lin family would never be able to hold their heads high again.
He returned to Dengzhou and stood before Pingcheng Gate. The villagers surrounded him, spitting insults: “The traitor's grandson has the nerve to come back?”
Lin Yuan said nothing. Looking at the brick carved with the character “Lin,” he noticed a yellowed slip of paper wedged into a crack. He unfolded it. One line was written on it:
“In the spring of the thirty-seventh year of the Republic, the city wall stood firm. Lin Dashuan was no traitor.”
The handwriting was his great-grandfather's.
Lin Yuan clenched the note in his hand, turned to the villagers, and said, “Give me three months. If I can't dig up the evidence, the Lin family will leave Dengzhou for good and never return.”
Three months, thirty bricks hiding a secret, a city wall three thousand years old, and one man's innocence.
From then on, Lin Yuan dug for bricks at the foot of the wall every day. Each time he unearthed one, Grandpa City Wall would tell him a story about it: a Han Dynasty sentry carving his surname into it, Zhang Guolao...
