Cactus in Time

"Cactus in Time" tells the story of a group of children born around 1980 in a village called Santi, near the Yellow Sea in northern Jiangsu. Since they met in primary school in 1986, their fate has changed over the past forty years. Because the village is rich in medicinal cacti, this group of teenagers who call themselves the "Leopards of the Seventies, Eighties and Eighties" live like drought-tolerant plants that grow tenaciously in the soil of the drastic changes of the times. The story uses the gentle and sensitive Shi Qian as the main line, connecting the fate of twenty classmates. Some of them, like squad leader Xue Naifa, firmly believed in "strong selection" and took root in local medicine with pragmatism and enterprising spirit; some, like Sun Runhai, fell into rivers and lakes and went astray in the impulsive "virtual selection"; some, like Wu Gang and Chen Liang, relied on the resilience of "weak selection" to make a living in crab ponds and wheels. Shi Qian, a country girl with ordinary talent but tenacity, struggled with secret love, low self-esteem and family pressure, and relied on reading to escape from the shackles of the environment. She is kind, perseverant and hard-working, relying on the unique power of women to seize the dividends of the times and ultimately achieve success. The novel uses delicate writing to depict the changing scene of a group of teenagers growing up into young adults and middle-aged people from the 1980s to the 1920s after the reform and opening up, as well as the struggle and progress of a generation in the wave of urbanization and marketization. The ever-growing cactus field is not only the coordinate of their childhood memories, but also the spiritual hometown that has always lingered in the hearts of this group of "Youth Travelers" after they went to the ends of the world. A youth contract spanning nearly forty years, waiting for the summer of 2025, when the cactus flowers bloom, witnessing the ups and downs and perseverance in the depths of time.