The Han River Is Not Abandoned

The Han River is a water vein soaked in the mist and rain of "The Book of Songs" and witnessing the rise and fall of the Chu land. Its waves contain the weight of thousands of years of history, and also reflect an ordinary person's wandering and perseverance for nearly a century. Wang Xiangge was born in 1924 in a fishing village near the river. His crying coincided with the rumors of the Northern Expedition, and his childhood was intertwined with the warmth of fishing fires and the sound of horse hooves in retreat. The flood swept away the loved ones, the abacus opened the mind, and the young man learned perseverance in the turbid waves. When he was young, he rode a small boat, floating among the undercurrents of the rivers and lakes and the smoke of war, from the Han River to Yunnan and Burma, from the anti-Japanese battlefield to the whirlpool of the civil war, carrying an embroidered peace charm to guard the last tenderness in his heart. In 1949, he came back on crutches, like an old tree that had been struck by thunder and fire. Faced with the ruins of the ancestral hall and the desolation of his hometown, he turned the pain of the battlefield into the power of reconstruction. From cooperatives to communes, from literacy classes to water conservancy embankments, he carried the nation's hopes and pains with his silent backbone at every turn of the times. In his later years, he witnessed the flourishing of his family and the decline of tradition. He wrote and continued to revise the family tree, and salvaged the fading memories in the dim light of the computer. Wang Xiangge is not a hero, he is just an ordinary person by the river who strives to "live like a human being". His life is a miniature modern history of China - it started with a tiny mote, went through torrents, and ended with the unfailing soul of the river, creating the glimmer of the national spirit. The Han River will never be abandoned and will flow forever. What flows here is not only water, but also time, memory and life itself.