"Heirloom" is set in the countryside of the liberated areas in the 1940s, and revolves around the conflict between mother-in-law and daughter-in-law in an ordinary family. It shows the collision of old and new ideas and the impact of social changes on family relationships. The core characters of the story are mother-in-law Li Chengniang and daughter-in-law Jin Gui. Li Chengniang guarded an old dowry box that she regarded as a "family heirloom", which contained needles, threads, rulers, scissors, thimbles, pliers, dozens of kilograms of old cloth, and other "household management experience" she had accumulated over the years. She believed that running a household should be frugal and make one's own decisions in everything. She believed this was the foundation for maintaining a family. Men work outside and women work at home and keep to themselves. These concepts of the old society collided with all kinds of discordant notes when they met Jin Gui, the daughter-in-law who came to the Li family at the time of the transition between the old and the new. The old box regarded as a "family heirloom" actually symbolizes the replacement of the old feudal family concepts by the new ideas of democracy and equality; it criticizes the conservative and backward feudal patriarchy and commends the new society's "collective consultation" and "democratic housekeeping" and other new concepts for the benign transformation of traditional family relationships. The writing of the book is smooth, the conflicts are reasonable, the language is very simple, and the strong local flavor is overwhelming, which reflects Zhao Shuli's creative style of "writing for farmers and about farmers".
