Introduction to the work In 1990, the wind in the mountains of northern Shanxi was filled with the smell of cinders. Dad said: You can survive by going down the well; Mom said: study hard and don't touch this black hole. The four boys and I squatted on the coal pile, watching the mine carts clang by, shouting that we were going far away. The cinder road under our feet has been entangled for a lifetime. Some people escaped, some fell back, and some guarded the coal mountain, enduring the distance as a longing. This is the story of five miners born in the 1990s, about running away, about returning, and about the out-of-reach sky above the black coal pile.
Intention: Intention: Focusing on the coal industrial zone in northern Shanxi in the 1990s, using the growth trajectory of five teenagers as a perspective, it shows the fate struggle, family ties and land complex of small people in the era, explores the life choices of "staying" and "running away", and restores the collective memory and local sentiments of a generation.