They Were Swept Up in the Tide

Being born a girl was considered an "original sin," but accepting one's fate? That was never their choice!

In the villages of the 1980s, the four Gao sisters were tightly bound by poverty and the preference for sons over daughters. Gao Juhua ran away from home and fought her way from a vegetable stall to a home in a soon-to-be-demolished building. Yet, driven by the obsession with carrying on the family line, she risked everything and knowingly gave birth to a child with Down syndrome. She lost her job, and the rest of her life plunged into an abyss. Gao Yihong spent half her life being drained by her family, while her in-laws trampled on her dignity. She ran away several times, but gave in for her daughter's sake, until her youth was spent. Gao Meihua married a lazy glutton of a husband and shouldered the whole family with her sweat and blood on construction sites. Gao Hongxia was blinded by "love" and followed her young husband into poorer mountain country, then went south and came away battered and bruised.

They were sisters bound by blood, glimmers of light in one another's darkness. Gao Yihong helped Gao Juhua flee an arranged marriage and go on the run; after becoming successful, Gao Juhua supported her sisters in return...

They fought the current of fate in different ways and paid different prices, but they shared the same stubborn strength at their core.

Their struggles carved a glimmer of light for the next generation.

Twenty years later, their children took entirely different paths. Lin Xinrui worked hard, graduated from a prestigious university, and became a high-earning professional. When she faced gender and class prejudice, she responded with anger and courage, becoming an urban elite. Lin Mengchun left home and declared her independence by choosing to remain single. Tang Wanruo studied medicine and made herself strong; when fate played a cruel joke, she reshaped her younger brother's life...

This is a war between two generations of women: a long struggle against old ideas, the limitations of their times, and their own weakness. They spend their whole lives fighting for the simplest of rights: to breathe a breath of freedom on their own terms.