Eating Dumplings for New Year

This is a realistic novel with the New Year's Eve dinner of an ordinary family in northern China as the only timeline. The story takes place on a New Year's Eve from four o'clock in the evening to midnight. It revolves around a meal of dumplings and presents the triple conflicts between parents and a pair of adult children regarding house, marriage and work. The father's experience is based on land, houses and a stable family structure, the mother maintains the family with a long-term accounting lifestyle, and the children re-understand the meaning of "stability" in an urbanized and mobile society. The novel does not rely on plot advancement, but unfolds a structural narrative through dialogue and silence at the dinner table, allowing the value systems of three generations to collide in the same space. The story begins with the daily routine of making dumplings, gradually enters into a real-life conflict in the background of the Spring Festival Gala, and then ends in silence after the zero o'clock countdown. Finally, it forms a time slice about how Chinese families understand each other but cannot fully understand each other in the changing times.