There Is a Flag in the Sea

In 2003, Rongcheng, Shandong. Zhang Boyou, a national defense engineer who graduated from Harbin Institute of Technology, and his younger brother Zhang Zhonghua, the village party secretary who graduated from Shandong University in Sociology, were both swept into the reservoir by a whirlpool while trying to save a child who had fallen into the water. When they opened their eyes again, they were already on a Chinese labor ship sailing to the French battlefield in 1917. 140,000 Chinese workers, 20,000 casualties. They know this history - because they come from the future and read about it in their textbooks. On the French battlefield, Zhang Zhonghua used his organizational skills to turn a thousand numbers into a thousand people, saving 197 lives amidst artillery fire and disease. Zhang Boyou used engineering technology to improve his positions and drew drawings in the trenches that even the British were amazed by. After the armistice in 1918, the brothers separated in Marseille Port: Zhang Boyou stayed in Europe and spent ten years secretly purchasing machine tools, arms and pharmaceutical equipment for the motherland; Zhang Zhonghua boarded a ship to return to China, but encountered a shipwreck on the way and drifted to a desert island in the South Pacific surrounded by five islands. In 1928, the brothers reunited on Canghai Island. Zhang Boyou took out the Shanghai brand watch whose second hand always stopped at 3:17 in the afternoon from his pocket: "I said I will return it to you." Since then, the Wanglu Islands have transformed from a refuge for exiles to a secret arsenal. They built ships, made medicine, and made steel in the South Pacific. It took them thirty-five years to find a way home.