With a calm writing style, the novel traces the complete trajectory of a rural life from the soil: the grievances between family brothers, the undercurrent of power in the countryside, the wanderings of the working age, the longing and dislocation in love, the decay of the body and the collapse of dignity. The marriage between Jin Nuanren and Han Jiayuan is the mutual imprisonment of two "people who can't love" in the cracks of the times - he longs for her "want", and she can only give "permission"; she takes care of him out of responsibility, but cannot give a soulful response.
This is not an inspirational story, nor is it a simple narrative of suffering. What it asks is: when the body becomes a ruin, when love becomes a debt, when "living" itself becomes the only morality, how can people find the balance line as thin as a hair between dignity and survival?
Conception: