In the spring of the early 1980s, a revolution that changed the destiny of China's rural areas quietly blew into this ancient land like a spring breeze. The big bell of the production team was rung, and the collective field was divided into small pieces. The pieces of paper with numbers on them were crumpled into balls and thrown into the enamel basin, waiting for those rough palms to open them one by one.
This is a novel about land.
But it's not just about the land. It is about how a farmer turns a barren slope into a grain field with a hoe and a pickaxe; about how a family makes a bitter life sweet with a porridge and a meal; about how a village reunites the separated hearts, brick by brick.
It's about roots. About the inexplicable, unclear, and constantly divided relationship between people and land. About what a person can grow into after putting his roots into the soil.
The protagonist Chen Youfu drew lots and found a piece of slope land in Donggang that no one wanted. The sloping land is poor and cannot be irrigated during drought or drained away from waterlogging. The people in the village sigh and worry for him. But from that day on, he never left that slope. He turned over the soil on that slope, planted seeds, watered, weeded, prevented insects, and applied fertilizer. He worked year after year and harvested season after season. He dug a water hole to save corn from dry weather; he received new varieties of seeds from the agricultural technology station, doubling grain production; he built greenhouses, raised chickens, stocked fish, built new houses, and bought tractors. He turned a piece of neglected land into a granary for the whole village.
