A Sequel to Ordinary World

A Sequel to Ordinary World

In the spring of 1985, on Tomb-Sweeping Day, Shuangshui Village's new school is completed, and Sun Shaoping returns to the Dayawan coal mine after recovering from his injuries. This is where the story of Ordinary World ends. This book picks up from that very day and continues through 2025: forty years, eight volumes, and 120 chapters.

Sun Shaoan opens a brickworks, loses his wife, and starts over, going from a "ten-thousand-yuan household" to the last person in Shuangshui Village still tending the old brick kiln. Sun Shaoping marries Huaying, the widow of his mentor, works underground until retirement, then returns to the village with black lung and turns the old school Shaoan built into a rural library. Tian Runye cares for Li Xiangqian, whose legs were amputated, and makes a life with him despite their broken circumstances. Tian Fujun transfers from the prefecture to the provincial government. In his later years, he often sits alone, thinking of his daughter Xiaoxia, who was a journalist. Jin Bo spends seven or eight years pursuing a Tibetan girl, but in the end all that remains is a bowl of milk tea on the grasslands. There are also Sun Lanxiang, Tian Runsheng, Hao Hongmei, Wang Manyin, and Sun Yuting.

The cave dwellings of Shuangshui Village become brick houses, and then the brick houses stand empty. Grain coupons become WeChat, letters become phone calls, but the people are still the same.

This is not a story of success. It is about how ordinary people endure these forty years: contracting land, going into business, being laid off, taking migrant work, returning farmland to forest, moving to the city, escaping poverty, and surviving the pandemic.

The land remains, the people remain, and life goes on.