City and Walls

The Xi'an City Wall is the largest and best-preserved ancient city wall still standing in China. It is also a source of pride and spiritual comfort for the people of Xi'an. Protecting cultural relics is a mission and responsibility history has entrusted to the people of Xi'an, and a challenge they must overcome. The novel follows He Xiaoman and his father as they match wits with overseas relic smugglers and help the police recover five Tang Dynasty murals that had been taken abroad. It offers a sweeping portrayal of the trials and tribulations involved in protecting and restoring the ancient city wall, and recreates the hardships of recovering looted relics from overseas. It is the story of Xi'an's urban development over fifty years, from the early 1980s to 2020, as well as a history of the city's people pressing forward and finding solutions to protect their ancient wall. At its heart, the tangled fate of three generations of the He family and the city wall, with all their joys and sorrows and partings and reunions, captures the everyday life and spirit of Xi'an.