Crossing the Ashes to Explore

"Xinglong Mansion" In the midsummer of 1988, sixteen-year-old Liu Jun encountered his mother's unspeakable secret in the warehouse of his family restaurant. A plea of ​​"Don't say" made him swallow a dangerous piece of sand into his life, and he learned to wrap everything in silence. For the next twenty years, he carried this secret behind the greasy counter of Xinglong Restaurant and witnessed the boiling of the times and the ups and downs of individuals: failing the college entrance examination, his father falling ill, and the cold calculations of the business world. He struggled in the multiple whirlpools of family undercurrents, moral debt and survival pressure, swallowed his disappointment with the rice wine in the kitchen, and turned good intentions into heavy liabilities. Until he was on the verge of collapse, he finally understood: the real salvation is not to forget or escape, but to sit face to face with all the unbearable truths of the past, and boil the broken memories and scars into a pot of his own warm old flavor. This is a long and silent self-digestion, and it is also about how an ordinary person, in a rapidly changing era, uses a lifetime of cautious words, deeds and tenacious work to complete the profound transformation from a "carrier" to a "rebuilder". The story spans Shanghai from 1988 to 2007. It outlines the various aspects of life in alley restaurants with calm white descriptions. The thunder of the times is seen in the trivial daily life, and the weight of fate is hidden under the light humor. It's not a grand saga, but a mundane epic about secrets, debt, forgiveness, and how one ultimately comes to a flawed but honest reconciliation with life.