At the end of the Qing Dynasty and the beginning of the Republic of China, society underwent drastic changes, old and new ideological trends collided, and power and poverty were intertwined. In Miaoshan Village, Shatou County, Yangzhou Prefecture, Jiangsu Province, Wang Daiyu, a poor farmer, and his family are trapped in the quagmire of poverty and oppression. The eldest son Wang Rong is mediocre and lazy, while the adopted son Acheng is obsessed with Western knowledge of "strange and obscene skills" and is regarded as a "useless person" by the villagers. The turning point of fate began with a dying cattle - Cheng, relying on scientific observations, discovered that the precious medicinal material bezoars bred in the cow's body was worth far more than gold. Overnight, the Wang family rose from abject poverty to the richest man in the village. The Wang family attempts to use this wealth as a basis to develop ancestral dyeing secrets, set foot in textile mills, and start an industry to save the country. Later, due to Acheng's marriage to the county magistrate's daughter, he stepped onto the threshold of power. However, wealth and status do not bring a smooth road, but a more complicated conspiracy. Subsequently, the Wang family was destroyed, and Acheng fled to Tongchang County, where he was taken in by the Zhang family, which ran a textile factory. From then on, Acheng began his journey of industrial salvation in the textile factory. During this journey, human nature is repeatedly torn between greed and dignity, and the fate of the family also fluctuates in the torrent of the times.
Purpose: Based on the grand background of the wave of changes set off by the New Deal in the late Qing Dynasty in industry, education and other fields, this book weaves into a magnificent historical scroll such major historical events as the shattering of mountains and rivers under the iron heel of the Eight-Power Allied Forces, the emergence of the "Imperial Commercial Laws of the Qing Dynasty and Company Laws", and the undercurrent of the Southeast Mutual Protection Agreement. Through the unique perspective of the novel, the game between bureaucratic capital and the private economy in the late Qing Dynasty is presented in multiple dimensions.