Lin Xiaoqing never imagined that an ordinary field study would send her tumbling from Beijing in 2024 into Qingshui River in 1920.
When she opens her eyes again, she has become Dalian, daughter of Old Man Song of the Firearms Battalion. In the historical records, she is a tragic girl remembered in just one line: “Drowned herself in the river, aged sixteen.”
She knows what lies ahead: her father will sell her to the Zhao family as their fourth wife. With nowhere left to turn, she will throw herself into the river and die. She doesn’t want to die. But she soon discovers that staying alive is harder than dying. In this era, a sixteen-year-old Bannerman girl has no money, no freedom, and no control over her own body.
Her only light is Tong Xiaoliu, the young man waiting for her by the river. He is so poor he can barely scrape by and cannot even afford a new changshan, yet he is willing to risk his life to protect her.
But Dalian doesn’t want anyone to save her. She will save herself. She understands this era and the rules of every alley in Beijing. She knows which paths lead to a dead end and which can get her through. With the mind of a modern person, she will make a life for herself a hundred years in the past.
The road is brutal: she is locked up, beaten, and passed from one marriage to another like a piece of property.
But the ending is warm: she refuses to accept her fate, and fate can do nothing to her.
This is the story of a woman fighting for her life in a time of turmoil. It is also the story of someone who “was never meant to live in this era, yet insists on making something of her life.”
