Autumn 2024, the final battle over preserving Beijing's hutong neighborhoods and developing them commercially.
The story takes place in the old hutongs between Dongsi Tiao and Dongsi Batiao, soon to be demolished, facing the glass towers of the CBD just a hundred meters away.
Thirty-two-year-old historic building restoration specialist Lin Wantang takes on the digital preservation project for the "last hutong" and discovers a name erased from her father's hand-drawn plans from thirty years ago: a female urban planner who devoted her youth to renovating the hutongs, then disappeared for unknown reasons. Alongside Shen Yu, an urban data expert recently returned from Silicon Valley who unexpectedly enters her life, she brings together their respective "old crafts" and "new algorithms." Amid the roar of bulldozers, they piece together the story of an idealism betrayed by the times, and heal the unspoken pain two generations carry over "staying or leaving."
A city's warmth never comes from the hardness of steel and concrete, but from the tender gaze of those willing to linger for a single tile, or for another person. Every farewell conceals a meeting whose story has yet to be finished.
