In the third year of Xianfeng, in the Jintian River Basin in Lingnan, the Hakka Li family and the Guangfu Tan family lived across the river. They did not intermarry or visit ancestral halls for a hundred years.
A ferry murder broke the peace - the second young master of the Tan family was killed, and the character "" was carved on the hatchet. Tan Boyong led a regiment to besiege the Li family ancestral hall and broke the legs of the patriarch Li Shuming. A large-scale fight broke out between the two clans, and the Tan family's ancestral house was burned down. Li Qiyuan carried Miss Tan Yuyao out of the fire, but she said: "You saved me, but your people killed my family."
The armed fighting lasted for several years, and three thousand villages were reduced to scorched earth. Li Qiyuan lived at Wucheng Pier carrying sugar packets for three years, and he learned the art of making sugar. Zhong Bingkun, an overseas Chinese from Nanyang, returned with funds, and the two returned to their hometown to build a new-style sugarhouse. Twelve years later, Tan Yuyao found an unsent letter among her deceased brother's belongings - the real murderer turned out to be...
In the spring of the second year of Guangxu's reign, cars and people were coming and going on Taiping Bridge. Folk songs came intermittently, and they were no longer singing about hatred, but about planting sugar cane. The Jintian River flows under the bridge, with fallen flowers floating on the water.
The water flows eastward, and the flowers follow the water. The bridge is still there and the people are still there.
