Lin Shen, a selected graduate from a top-tier 985 university, refuses to play along with the unspoken rules and is “exiled” to Linchuan Town, where floods are frequent. On his first day reporting for duty, his trousers split at the crotch, but helping an old farmer push a cart earns him his first bit of goodwill.
Drawing on his social sciences expertise, he solves the town’s flood-control crisis by reading water-level marks in an ancestral hall from the Qing dynasty. He uses Douyin livestreams to turn unsold mountain produce into a hit brand, and even dares to plead for an enemy village Party secretary at a Party committee meeting. Everyone laughs at his idealism, until the century-old ancestral hall he protected is recognized as a national-level item of intangible cultural heritage, the cooperative he founded catches the attention of CCTV reporters, and the well-connected official’s son he once turned down asks him through reddened eyes if he regrets it.
Then the female teacher who always knocks on his dormitory door late at night suddenly says one day, “My dad wants to know if you’d be interested in going to the provincial flood control office to specialize in planting stars.”
The grassroots are the finest sky full of stars. Those who bend down to serve will one day light up the heavens.
