In the spring of 1962, the eighth sister married Qu Desheng with a small burden. Two old clothes, a wooden comb, and a small round mirror with a knocked corner. There was no betrothal gift or new clothes, but two hot hearts supported the family with simple hands.
In the following decades, Bamei and Desheng worked hard with hoe and sickle in the poorest adobe house in Huinan Mountains, and gave birth to four children - Pingshun, Pingmei, Ping'an and Pingyi. The sons and daughters of the Qu family have an unbreakable backbone. They are down-to-earth, tenacious, and unwilling to accept fate. These are the most valuable qualities given to them by their parents.
This is a family epic that spans half a century and is a microcosm of tens of millions of ordinary Chinese families. Bamei and Desheng lifted the children one by one from the mud and sent them to a wider world.
Concept: The novel was written from 1962 to the new century, spanning more than half a century of changes in China's rural areas. The work points of production teams, the supply on the basis of votes from supply and marketing cooperatives, the wave of reform and opening up, the torrent of migrant workers entering the city... The great waves of the times hit everyone one after another. But there are no earth-shattering heroes in the Qu family, only a group of ordinary people living an honest life in the cracks of the times. It is these ordinary people's down-to-earth, forbearance, and refusal to accept fate that form the simplest and most solid foundation of Chinese society.