After three years of drought, Yushu Village is almost dead.
The Shen family is one of the poorest families in the village. Five people were crowded into three drafty mud houses, with only a grain of rice left at the bottom of the pot.
But six-year-old Shen Baoya is the darling of the family.
Grandma saved the last grain of rice for her, mother gave her the thick porridge in the bowl, and slept with her arms close to her heart at night. Her brother smiled at her when he came back from digging wild vegetables, and his father knelt down and hugged her when he came back from carrying sacks.
The whole family is hungry, the whole family is carrying her, and the whole family is protecting her in their hands.
Baoya didn't cry, didn't make a fuss, and didn't tell anyone she was hungry.
But she tightened her grip on the gray bead in her pocket—it was found under her grandma's cabinet. It was stained with dust and had a fine line, and no one knew about it.
Zhuzi recognized her.
Black soil, spring water, and rice seedlings appeared before her eyes out of thin air. She secretly added rice to the pot, secretly watered the dry soil, and secretly went to plant in a place no one knew about at night.
She thought she was hiding it well.
But she didn't know that her grandma saw her clutching beads in a daze, her mother noticed that she wasn't on the kang in the middle of the night, her brother felt rice under her pillow, and her father felt something tingling in her arms when he knelt down to hug her - the whole family was pretending not to know, and the whole family was keeping the secret that couldn't be told for her.
Because she is the treasure of the Shen family.
And the secret behind that bead, and another old incident buried under Yushu Village, has just begun.
When Baoya clutched the beads and walked slowly forward, she didn't know how long this day would last.
But she knew something was different.
