A World of Flowers, Layered in Shadows Again

Flowers Through the Years: Story Summary

In the turbulent era of the Republic of China, in Shanghai, young Lin Wange witnesses her mother being abandoned by the family because of her illness and resolves to become an independent woman. Her talent leads her to become a doctor, but while treating Shen Xu, the son of a wealthy family, she becomes entangled in a secret engagement. Shen Xu's mother pressures her to give him up. Torn between morality and desire, Lin Wange ultimately lets him go so he can fulfill his dream of studying abroad. When the war reaches Shanghai, Lin Wange devotes herself to battlefield medicine, only to unexpectedly reunite with Shen Xu and see that he has become a cold, detached military doctor. On the eve of liberation, she becomes a medical instrument for a military intelligence agent, but in desperate circumstances, she saves the revolutionary wife of Shen Xu. In old age, Lin Wange writes her memoirs in a psychiatric hospital and realizes that the love and hatred of her life were a reflection of women's fates swept along by the tide of history.