Pale yellow is the color of the first sprouting of vegetation, and it is also the most authentic background color of time and the earth.
In the midsummer of 1998, Xie Ming graduated from the Chinese Department of a prestigious university in the provincial capital. His instructor strongly recommended him to stay at the school to teach. A stable and smooth road ahead was paved. But he resolutely gave up the opportunity and returned to his hometown, this agricultural county, just because his high school classmate Zhang Jingfang, who had been in love for many years, was waiting here.
The two spent four years apart, writing letters and seeing each other again and again, and their pure love supported each other. The disparity in family circumstances did not waver Xie Ming. He fully thought that he could stay with his lover for the rest of his life when he returned to his hometown.
I never thought that in just one month, things would change drastically. After returning from a trip to the provincial capital, Zhang Jingfang suddenly cut off all contact. Soon the news came that she was about to marry the son of the deputy director of the county party committee office. Twenty-two-year-old Xie Ming experienced the bitterness of being frustrated in love for the first time.
His life took a sudden turn, and he took root in his hometown and joined the county party committee's veteran cadre bureau, starting out as an ordinary officer. In the following twenty years, the tide of the times rolled forward, and major and minor events such as township changes, flood relief, state-owned enterprise restructuring, park construction, and county development came one after another, all of which became experiences in his life.
After half a lifetime of ups and downs, he has personally experienced all kinds of officialdom, and is well versed in the ins and outs of power; he has tasted the loneliness of broken love, and also encountered sincere tenderness; he has had moments of high spirits, and has also fallen into troughs and confusion. Born in a peasant family, he persevered in the wind and rain, moved forward amidst the choices, embarked on a long journey, and finally grew into a chief official.
This is the growth trajectory of ordinary people in the era, and it is also a life narrative about choice and perseverance. On the vast land, the story unfolds slowly.
