Jiang Xiaonian’s Twenty-Four Solar Terms

Jiang Xiaonian is a single mother born in the 1980s. One day after New Year, she leaves the city after her divorce and returns to Daoxiang Village with her four-year-old son, Afu. There, she spends a peaceful and fulfilling time in a southern village with her great-great-grandmother, who is over ninety. Through the daily rhythms of growing and cooking her own food, she gradually heals her inner wounds. The twenty-four solar terms mark the farming seasons, and through the cycle of planting and harvest, she slowly makes peace with her husband and turns ordinary days into art. Using the solar terms as her framework and farming proverbs as her threads, she records the passage of time with the microorganisms in her pickling jar. When young city dwellers return to the countryside with modern agricultural technology, the wisdom of traditional farming collides with ideas from beyond the mountains, sparking a brilliant exchange. The twenty-four solar terms become seventy-two rings in the terraced fields.