In the 1980s, Zheng Guodong, a young man from the Hecheng Mountain District in Jiangnan Province, grew up in the light of his father's teachings of "serving the people" and the glimmer of an old party emblem. He was talented, worked hard to skip grades, and was finally admitted to the Law Department of Yenching University as the top scholar in the county.
Many years later, a sudden change brought him to a sudden halt. After all the glitz was gone, he stood in the middle of his life and looked back: From being on the red list in the mountains to being lost in the city, who and when did he "steal" the initial weight of that badge? Between the flow of the times and personal choices, can an idealist find the courage to embrace it again on top of the ruins?
Through the ups and downs of personal destiny, this book profoundly reflects the complex social and spiritual changes in the decades of reform and opening up, and explores the eternal propositions of original intention, cost and redemption.
