Xiangshui to the South

In the twelfth lunar month of 1991, Zhou Guilan, a woman from Wugang, pushed away the little hand that came through the crack of the door, stuffed the last half of a sweet potato into the mouth of a yellow dog chasing a car, and got on the long-distance bus heading south. She thought she could earn sixty yuan as a nanny in Guangzhou, but she didn't expect that she would be away for twenty-four years. She had her hands stepped on, she was defrauded of money, she slept under a bridge, and she didn't even stop when a needle pricked her finger on a sewing machine in a toy factory. From nanny to lathe worker, from factory director to industry godmother, she stitched her life back together with stitches. But what made her finish this road was not her ambition, but her son waiting for her at the crack of the door, the eight hundred scratches on the crooked neck tree, and the stove that a mute yellow dog had guarded for sixteen years. This is about a woman's running away, and it is also a story about "waiting": a mother is waiting for her child, the child is waiting for her mother, a dog is waiting for its owner, and a city is waiting for a person to come back. The Xiang River flows south, and the road is still going.