She Soars with the Times

This is a story that begins on the Loess Plateau, about childbirth and the passing down of life. Ma Chunlan never truly left the land throughout her life. She was the daughter of a poor peasant family, a laborer on the production team, the land’s most devoted servant, and a midwife who helped one life after another enter the world on this Loess Plateau. She scrimped and saved every penny she could coax from the earth, all to give her daughter, Li Xuemei, a better life. Fortunately, Li Xuemei lived up to her mother’s hopes. At eighteen, she was admitted to Beijing Medical College. At twenty-four, she went to work at a hospital in Shenzhen and became a true obstetrician. In the end, she returned to the Loess Plateau... She remade herself in the modern world, gave birth to her daughter, Ma Jiatan, with happiness and hope, taught her to respect and protect women’s bodies, and watched as she followed in her footsteps, completing her first delivery in a modern, sterile operating room. This is a relay race run by three generations of women. One lights the flame, another shields it through wind and rain, and the last turns it into a beacon. Swept along by the tide of the times, they span seventy years, putting down roots in the land, then taking flight with its support, until at last they return to give back to it... Standing on Chinese soil and living through the transformations of their era, they complete a magnificent spiritual odyssey through the passing down of life, writing the story of their lives.