In the late years of Guangxu, the Qing government established farmland and guarded the border. Yang Yiming, a young man from Gansu Province, and his wife Liu Sixuan went to Qitai, Xinjiang. On the deserted Gobi Desert, he planted a willow tree and swore: "When this willow tree forms a shade, this place will be the root of our descendants."
A sudden change of fate. Yang Yiming was forced to go to the gold mines in northern Xinjiang. Before leaving, he buried a poplar sapling next to a willow tree: "If the willows and willows guard each other, I will return." From then on, the two trees became each other's only tokens.
In the endless waiting, Liu Sixuan raised her young son alone in the harsh wind and sand of Qihu Township. She talks to the tree every day, watching the poplar saplings tenaciously survive from the dead branches, watching the two trees gradually grow into bones over the years, and the branches grow slowly but firmly towards each other. She embroidered the veil of "willows and willows depend on each other" and sewed half a lifetime of blood, tears and watching into the annual rings.
And Yang Yiming, who almost died in a mining accident, fled and got lost, carried half a nugget of gold and dragged his body through the war and desert. His only faith was the two oath trees.
Thirty years have passed, and the roots of the willows in the Gobi are finally tightly entwined underground, and the branches and leaves are touching gently in the air.
This is a story about taking root, watching and returning. It uses the simplest soil and trees to write the most extreme romance in ordinary life: with life as a promise, with tenacity as faith, at the end of time, waiting for the arrival of a two-way rush.
