Misty Rain in My Hometown

Misty Rain in the Old Home is a century-spanning tale of upheaval in the Jiangnan region, with Nanhu Lake in Jiaxing, the Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal, the Hangjiahu Plain, and Haining’s seawall as its geographical framework. It tells the long story of how a water town is repeatedly shattered and reborn amid the rise and fall of the silk trade, cutthroat business rivalries, wartime disruptions to river traffic, and changes of regime. Its central setting is a fictional old town: Yanqiao Town. Nestled in the waterways where Jiaxing, Tongxiang, and Haining meet, it is a place where clans, guilds, trading houses, officials, foreign merchants, and revolutionary forces vie for power. Rivers, docks, levees, sluice gates, silk markets, banks, city gates, and canals are all strategic power centers. “Home” here is not a wistful nostalgia, but a geographical fate no one can escape in a lifetime. It is not ancestral property, a clan hall, or a ceremonial archway, but the shared order that still lets people survive after floods, war, and the passage of time.