In the thirty-first year of Guangxu's reign, a small town in the south of the Yangtze River. Lin Wanqing, the daughter of Juren, originally lived a peaceful boudoir life, but a letter from her aunt in Tokyo opened up the scars of the family's old debts. The deed for a fifty-acre sacrificial field in the west of the city was uncovered. Qian Degui, a descendant of the bank, colluded with a comprador from a foreign bank to seize the land. When her grandfather fell ill and her family fell into decline, Wan Qing was forced to make a choice: should she let the arrangements lead her to marry a foreign country, or should she go out on her own in Shanghai and support herself and her grandfather by teaching piano?
From Suzhou to Shanghai, from being a boudoir daughter to teaching in a girls' school, she experienced the rules and prejudices of church schools, the coercion and inducement of wealthy businessmen and compradors, and the suffering of illness and loneliness. She met the mixed-race girl Luo Qi, the former piano player Zhou Lezheng, and the military officer Xie Mingyuan who had not returned for many years... Each of them left traces in her life, and made her see clearly again and again: the world will not wait for her, but she can choose to move forward.
This is a novel about women's self-redemption in the late Qing Dynasty. Not slow or slow, like the gentle rain in the south of the Yangtze River. Dedicated to all those who are looking for themselves in the cracks of time.
Mission: Women are independent and stick to themselves in the changing times