This is not a heroic tale of emperors and ministers, but a story belonging to “your grandfather's grandfather”: five generations of an ordinary farming family on the Huaibei Plain, spanning 109 years, from 1840 to 1949.
They were not born “ugly Chinese.”
Shen Wanzhou, a grain-boat sailor, watched silver flow out of the country and copper coins lose their value. He did not understand “why the nation was failing”; he only knew “why there wasn't enough grain.” Shen Likuan was driven by taxes and rent to sell his land and daughter, then knelt at the Cui family's gate for a day and a night, begging. Shen Youtian, the book's most steadfast figure, farmed all his life. He went from “just wanting enough to eat” to “this land should belong to us,” and finally died on the ridge of his own field on October 1, 1949, clutching a handful of soil.
And there were those whose names history erased:
Shen Youyi was not a bad man. With every path to survival blocked, he simply chose the wrong turn at every crossroads. Shen Guizhi had her feet bound for her entire life, then cut off her bindings on the eve of the founding of New China. Lin Xiulan, a girl who fled famine, cried as she learned to write her own name for the first time: “I have a name now.” Before, it was what other people called her. Now, she had written it herself.
