The Ups and Downs of the Past

Law student Zhao Zhenbang was troubled by the huge gap between books and reality. Looking at the gray sky on the slope outside Andingmen, his heart was filled with an unsolvable mess. He met Su Wanqing, a young woman who was torn between the marriage arranged by her aunt and her inner desire. Her smile always stopped halfway, like a pot of narcissus blooming on the windowsill, quiet and bitterly fragrant. They began a poor and warm life in the alleys of Peiping, under the overpass, and in the light of a kerosene lamp. He copied files in the court, and she wrote novels under the lamp. He wrote the six words "A family of five needs to eat", and she wrote the book "Pedestrians on the Bridge". They met Lao Wang who drove a rickshaw, Lin Hai, a young man who aspired to be a reporter, a middle school teacher who taught Lu Xun in class, and Principal Lu who had been running a school all his life - those tough-boned people, those who "cannot leave." On the night when the cannon fired at Marco Polo Bridge, the two held hands and walked into the morning light of Peiping. Two people, a city, a slow but never-ending road.