On the Weibei Plateau in Shaanxi, amid the gullies of the Loess Plateau, Zhao Baishun, the old Party secretary of Suanzaopo Village, dies suddenly during a drought. He leaves his son Zhao Guyu nothing but a desolate village and a weighty final charge: “Guard this cave cellar well, and protect this land.”
Zhao Guyu, a veteran, gives up his secure city job and resolutely takes on the burden of becoming the village Party secretary, despite the villagers’ doubts and his cousin Zhao Lixia’s mockery. On this drought-stricken yellow earth, he makes eight trips to the county seat just to secure permission to drill a deep well. As the e-commerce boom sweeps through, he awkwardly picks up a phone and starts livestreaming, hoping to sell the apples that have been piling up unsold and get them out of the mountains.
But building roads and bringing in water is easy; keeping people here and bringing them together is hard. When the desolation of an hollowed-out village meets the temptations of modern capital, Zhao Guyu must find a balance between the old clan leader’s conservatism and the merchants’ pursuit of profit.
This is a sweeping epic about the Loess Plateau, telling of three generations of farmers struggling to find a way forward and hold on through the tides of change. As the Xiyin high-speed railway thunders across the thousand-year-old loess tableland, spring finally comes to Suanzaopo.
