This is a love story of the Republic of China that spans Paris, Nanjing and Suzhou, about how the magnolias in the south of the Yangtze River and the apple blossoms in the northwest crossed thousands of miles and embraced each other quietly in the short spring before a war.
Gu Nian'an, a student studying in France, encounters Suzhou governor Shen Jingqiao on the streets of Paris. He didn't understand French, but he quietly listened to every poem she read; he brought a dried magnolia flower from Nanjing and said, "I'm afraid there isn't one in Paris." Gu Nian'an's temperament in Tianshui is as cold as the northwest wind, and Shenjing Bridge in Suzhou is as warm and moist as the water of Taihu Lake. Two people from completely different regions and different worlds quietly approached each other in the autumn of a foreign country.
During the magnolia blooming season, Shen Jingqiao went to Nanjing Station to pick her up wearing a moon-white gown. He took her to the Confucius Temple to eat rice dumplings with fermented rice, rowed clumsily on Xuanwu Lake, and talked about love in the reserved way unique to Suzhou people: "Wait until the magnolia blooms again - or wait until the apple blossoms bloom." After the wedding, there was always squirrel mandarin fish and hand-caught mutton on the dinner table. After a quarrel, he would order a bowl of Su-style noodles and say, "Eat first, and then quarrel after eating."
They all knew that troubled times were coming, but they still made a promise in their old yard on Pingjiang Road in Suzhou: to plant a magnolia and an apple tree. Two white spring flowers cannot tell each other apart, just as a distance of two thousand kilometers cannot stop two people from wanting to be together.
Concept: Love and tolerance can transcend all geographical and personality distances, allowing different cultures to take root and blossom in the same soil.
