[Rags-to-Riches Comeback] [The Millennium Era] [Urban Underworld] [Coming-of-Age Romance]
In the summer of 2002, eighteen-year-old Lu Ye boarded a green-painted train heading south, carrying half a book of herbal remedies passed down by his grandfather. He was on his way to stay with his sister-in-law, Shen Man, whom he had only ever seen in photographs. When he opened the door to her shabby rented room, he discovered that she had been enduring abuse on the factory assembly line by day to put him through school, then scraping by at a nightclub at night. Seeing the bruises on her body and the exhaustion in her eyes, Lu Ye clenched his fists and silently vowed to take responsibility. From confronting factory managers who bullied his coworkers to protecting strangers harassed by thugs on the street; from amateur boxing matches beneath an overpass to gradually making a name for himself in Guancheng, Lu Ye relied on the fire in his blood and his refusal to give up to carve out a way to survive for himself and his sister-in-law in this fast-growing new millennium. When powerful forces backed them into a corner, Lu Ye used his pure-hearted courage and sense of responsibility to prove to the world that a young man who clawed his way out of the dirt could still become someone who stood tall and proud.
