The Woman Who Fell for a Playboy

In the height of summer in 1996, Zhou Xiaoling of Taohuapo Village was a rare beauty in the surrounding countryside, with almond-shaped eyes and rosy cheeks. She should have been preparing for marriage, but disaster struck her family: her mother died in a car accident, her father was diagnosed with terminal esophageal cancer, and her childhood sweetheart Song Hui believed the rumors that she brought misfortune to her family and cruelly broke things off. Overnight, Xiaoling became an orphan with no one to rely on, shouldering the burden of caring for her gravely ill father and making funeral arrangements alone. With nowhere else to turn, she asked the honest, simple-minded bricklayer Zhao Yi to build a brick tomb for her father. His steadfast care and courageous rescue became the only light in her darkness. After her father died, neighbor Duan Minghui took advantage of her at night, but Zhao Yi came to her defense. Song Hui regretted his decision and returned to beg her to get back together, but Xiaoling firmly refused. She put the past behind her and married Zhao Yi, who was seven years older. Just as she thought she had found a stable life, her husband left to work away from home soon after their wedding, while the hoodlum Zhao Tianci began eyeing her covetously. The tangled loves and grudges, and the warmth and coldness of human nature in a 1990s village unfold across the loess slopes, as Xiaoling’s life sways onward through the storms.