Spanning sixty years (1957–2017), this story is set in Cangcheng, an ancient waterside town in Jiangnan, and follows three generations of the Shen family as they protect a collection of lost cultural relics. In 1957, Shen Huaijin, a young restorer of cultural relics, made an unexpected discovery while sorting through the storeroom of the Cangcheng Museum: a collection of precious artifacts that had never been entered into the inventory. The relics revealed a history buried for years. During the War of Resistance, Chen Yanqiu, a patriotic merchant from Cangcheng, spent his entire fortune secretly purchasing and protecting a number of national treasures that were about to be smuggled overseas, only to disappear mysteriously on the eve of liberation. Shen Huaijin took on the mission of safeguarding the collection, but during a turbulent era his home was ransacked and he was publicly denounced, forcing him to move the relics into hiding. Over the following decades, he contended with artifact dealers and smuggling rings while searching for Chen’s descendants, all to fulfill a promise: return the relics intact to their homeland and let the Chen family’s descendants know of their ancestors’ devotion to their country. Three generations, one promise, sixty years of watchful waiting.
