From the reign of Emperor Kangxi of the Qing Dynasty to the early years of the Republic of China, the Cao family in Beigu Village, Taigu County, Shanxi Province grew from a poor family selling casseroles to a wealthy Shanxi merchant family. The novel takes the fate of the five generations of the Cao family as the main line, running through the sound of camel bells in the "Ten Thousand Miles of Tea Ceremony", the transfer of "ticket numbers" to the world, the financial game of "bidding period", and the turbulent transformation in the late Qing Dynasty and the early Republic of China. In the conflicts between business ethics and family ethics, integrity and interests, conservatism and change, the Shanxi merchants' five-hundred-year-old spirit of "honesty as the foundation and justice as the basis for profit" is demonstrated.
