In the winter of 1997, four-year-old Qi Yanan left her hometown in Linquan, Anhui, wearing the bright red socks newly bought by her grandma. She didn't know that the pair of red socks she had snatched with her brother all night would accompany her on the green leather train for three days and nights, passing through the hinterland of the Central Plains, crossing the Gobi wilderness, and finally arriving at the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps at the foot of the Tianshan Mountains. The grandmother who loved her held her hand silently and walked towards the "old naughty" uncle who was wrestling with the wild geese while her grandfather was working in the Corps to open up wasteland. In the red brick house in his hometown, his father Qi Baoshu used a seagull camera to take a photo of his three-year-old son looking up at the bird's nest on the top of the cabinet. His mother Ren Yan put another pair of red socks at the bottom of the box. That "Please be careful when reversing" bus took away not only a four-year-old "tomboy", but also the entire family. In the next three years, my father and brother traveled half way across China to visit her. Two years later, when my mother was pregnant with twins, the family finally reunited in the adobe house of the 7th Company of the 182nd Regiment. From the Huaibei Plain to the northwest frontier, from the old custom of favoring boys over girls to the new home of farming and guarding the border, Qi Yanan's red socks were worn and mended, faded and dyed, but they were always brightly worn on the stubbornly growing feet of a girl. This is a story about separation and reunion, about an ordinary family drifting and taking root in the tide of the times. The pair of red socks that went north are sewn with grandma's unspeakable love, hidden late-night tears from parents, and also tied to childhood quarrels between siblings over candy. It will eventually tell us: some partings are to allow birds to fly higher into the sky; and all distances begin with a pair of little red socks embarking on a journey.
Purpose: Family resilience in the changing times, choices and protection beyond blood ties.