They Were Swept Up in the Tide

Being born a daughter is a "sin," but accepting your fate? That was never their choice!

In a rural village in the 1980s, the four Gao sisters were tightly bound by poverty and the preference for sons. Gao Juhua ran away from home and worked her way up from a vegetable stall to owning buildings slated for demolition, but, driven by an obsession with carrying on the family line, she risked everything to give 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 birth family and had her dignity trampled by her husband's family. She ran away several times, but always gave in for her daughter's sake, until her youth was gone. Gao Meihua married a lazy, gluttonous man and shouldered the whole family with her blood and sweat on construction sites. Gao Hongxia was blinded by love, plunged into an even poorer mountain village for the sake of her young husband, then went south and hit one dead end after another.

They were sisters bound by blood, and faint glimmers of light in one another's darkness. Gao Yihong helped Gao Juhua flee an arranged marriage and escape for her life; when Gao Juhua became successful, she supported her sisters in return...

They struggled against the currents of fate in different ways and paid different prices, but they shared the same resilience to the core.

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

Twenty years later, their children took completely different paths. Lin Xinrui worked hard, graduated from a prestigious university, and became a top executive. When faced with gender and class prejudice, she fought back bravely, furious but undaunted, and became an urban professional. Lin Mengchun left home and declared her independence by choosing to remain single. Tang Wanruo studied medicine and made herself strong, reshaping her younger brother's life amid the cruel jokes of fate...

This is the war of two generations of women: a long struggle against outdated ideas, the limits of their era, and their own weakness. They spend their whole lives fighting for the simplest of rights: to breathe the air of freedom on their own terms.