Isn't returning home just another kind of departure?
The day He Dan returned to the city from Beidahuang, he thought he had finally escaped hardship. He didn't know that Lulu's death would follow him for the rest of his life, that finding a foothold in the city would be harder than surviving in the wilderness, or that his mother would collapse before dawn. All he knew was that the girl who taught him to play the harmonica among the birch trees had taught him not to let people down.
This is a story about a group of sent-down youths returning to the city in the late 1970s, searching for a way forward in the narrow cracks of their era. There are tears and bloodstains, quiet perseverance, and a light that refuses to go out.
For everyone who has ever been broken and found the strength to rise again.
