In the 1960s and 1970s, a letter from her two sons from the Gobi Desert of Xinjiang stirred up the troubled life of widowed mother Wang Xiuying in Jincheng. In order for the family to "live a decent life", she took her two daughters on a westbound train and went to the "Gobi New Village" to seek relatives. From mastering needlework to wielding a shovel, from identifying food stamps to learning agricultural skills, this tenacious family took root inch by inch in the sweat of land reclamation. And their true "rooting" begins at the same frequency as the ancient heartbeat of this land - when the desolate song of the Twelve Muqam penetrates the wind and sand for the first time, when the neighbor hands over a piece of cloth printed with the gorgeous pattern of Adelais silk, when the underground spring of the karez miraculously nourishes the thirsty grape seedlings... Xinjiang's intangible cultural heritage is no longer a distant landscape, but the home of their survival wisdom, neighborly warmth and spirit.
This is a civilian epic that tells how an ordinary family migrates, takes root, and grows in the torrent of the times; it is also a hymn of cultural integration, witnessing the story of inheritance, watchfulness, and rebirth written by Han mothers and Uyghur craftsmen, corps soldiers, and folk artists in the Gobi Desert.
Intention: era