A Quiet Life in a Southern Water Town in the 1980s

In 1981, the plum rains linger endlessly over Baishui Town in southern Zhejiang, leaving everything sticky and damp.

Six months after marrying into the Chen family, Lin Xiulian rises before dawn and works until late, managing the household inside and out. Her husband's entire salary goes to his mother, and even the jar of pickled radishes she brought as part of her dowry is secretly taken to serve as drinking food for her younger brother-in-law.

Her mother-in-law plays favorites, her brother-in-law is a shameless rogue, and her husband is blindly filial and puts the family first. With her life in other people's hands, she feels stifled and trapped.

She doesn't throw tantrums or make a scene. Instead, she quietly builds a bamboo shed by the back river bend and raises Muscovy ducks, saving duck eggs to trade for sewing supplies and steaming rice cakes to sell at the market, little by little building up her own nest egg.

From slamming the table to divide the household and fighting for a vegetable plot, to setting up a stall at the town entrance and opening a food shop; from bristling clashes between mother-in-law and daughter-in-law to the whole extended family pulling together to make a life.

Along the bluestone lanes and the long Oujiang River, in the slow-paced 1980s, Lin Xiulian counts on her fingers and turns the household's daily chaos into the warm, lively bustle of life unique to a riverside town.