Wucheng, 1999, at the turn of the century. Thirteen-year-old Su Qingyan is the student teachers worry about least, and the good girl her mother insists must "stay on the right path." With her uneven short hair and neat school uniform, she is like a quiet potted plant, living within every rule imposed on her.
Then, that September, Xia Zhi transferred to her school.
A high ponytail of jet-black hair, shallow dimples, like a stone suddenly tossed into still water. An orange candy softened by body heat. An accidental touch beneath a desk. A hurried half-step back during PE class. In that suffocatingly conservative little county town, some things could not be given a name.
But the wind had already risen.
From 1999 to 2020, from a riverside town to a major city. Three girls' lives were swept along by the tide of the times. They lived through the taboos of the century's end, the fear of death during the SARS epidemic, and the nationwide confidence of the Olympic year. They also experienced the class mobility of a decade when foreign companies flourished, and the collapse of the old order in the mobile internet age.
The more repressive the times, the more love felt like stolen light.
The freer the times, the more their distance came to mean something beyond love.
This is not a story about courage.
It is a micro-epic of a generation of women moving from oppression toward self-acceptance.
Before the tide began to rise, they had already stood in the wind for a long time.
Theme: The growth and awakening of a generation of women
