Jiangjiawu, a small village on the bank of the Qujiang River with its back to Lanke Mountain, is famous in Quzhou for its "Dragon Toe" terrain and "Dragon Vein Tea". The Shaw family started with tea in the Ming Dynasty. After four hundred years of ups and downs, they built the "Shao Family Dragon Vein Tea House" and became the leading wealthy landowner family in the area. The story begins in the spring of 1934, when Shao Benshu, a dandy young master, encounters Cui Gu, a poor and shrewd girl in a tea mountain. The two become friends over tea, but fall into a love-hate entanglement due to family feuds and disparity in status. The feud between the Shaw family and the Ji family over the tea mountain a hundred years ago made this relationship as refreshing as the fragrance of tea but bitter and difficult to swallow. Amidst the sound of gongs and drums on the Double Ninth Festival, their secret tryst is exposed. Family antagonism and village criticism are like a storm, pushing the two to the edge of fate.
In 1937, the Japanese army broke through the tranquility of Quzhou, and the fragrance of tea in Jiangjiawu was swallowed up by the flames of war. Shao Benshu grew from a drunken young man to an anti-Japanese warrior. Cuigu saved the wounded with tea but died in the massacre of the village. Shao's teahouse became a focus of struggle from a symbol of wealth. In the flames of the Zhejiang-Jiangxi battle, Shao Benshu set a trap with tea leaves and killed Japanese officer Major Nakamura to avenge his family and lover. After the victory of the Anti-Japanese War in 1945, Jiangjiawu was devastated, and Shao Benshu went to the Soviet Union to study medicine. In 1956, he returned with his skills and beliefs, built a hospital in Quzhou, and rebuilt his hometown with the kindness of a doctor. The fragrance of Dragon Vein Tea floats again, accompanied by the aroma of medicine, telling the story of the cycle of life and death.
Concept: "Dragon's Toe of Jiangjiawu" uses tea leaves as a symbol to tell the story of how life can refine hope from bitterness amid family grievances, wars in troubled times and personal growth. The purpose of the work is to show the struggle and transformation of individuals in the torrent of the times: to explore the tenacity of love from the forbidden love between Shao Benshu and Cui Gu, to show the awakening of the national spirit from the blood and tears of the Anti-Japanese War, to build a hospital after studying abroad after the war to show the rebirth and responsibility for the homeland. Through the image of tea, it connects personal destiny and feelings of family and country, conveys the belief that "suffering breeds new life, inheritance creates the future", and praises the brilliance of human nature and its persistence in peace in desperate situations.