Spring and Autumn Period, Qingni Village. Li Wang, a cowherd boy, met Jiang Yanyao, a girl from a declining family, when they were ten years old. He is a poor boy smelling of cow dung, and she is a pretty girl in red. Since the two families started to interact with each other for farm work during spring plowing, the two children have gradually become inseparable partners - going to the river beach to graze cattle together, naming the cattle "Huahua", digging wild vegetables in the mountains and forests, and catching small fish in the streams. Li Wang loves to brag and always says that he will achieve great things in the future; Jiang Yanyao loves to laugh and likes peonies the most. The two agreed to raise a hundred cows when they grow up.
They have been together for ten years, childhood sweethearts, and secretly in love. But in the tenth spring, plague and drought came at the same time. Li Wang's cows died one after another. Jiang Yanyao was spotted by a wealthy family from other places. After being rejected many times, she was plotted and her family's livelihood was cut off. Her parents forced her to get married, and she wanted Li Wang to elope with her, but she was locked in the room. On the day of her wedding, seventeen-year-old Jiang Yanyao was hanging in her boudoir. Her parents were suffering from heart disease and passed away one after another.
Li Wang's hair turned gray overnight, and he became addicted to alcohol and never married. Every year during the Qingming Festival, he would plant peonies next to her grave. He had been planting one kind for forty years. Until the year he died of illness, peonies were in full bloom all over the mountain. Their stories were made into nursery rhymes and sung by children: "Qingni Village, clear water, brother Li's head turned gray. Peonies bloomed year after year, and those who waited for the cowherd boy never returned to the village entrance."
The most painful thing in the world is when you make a promise to stay together for the rest of your life, only to be left alone in the end.
