People of the Lakeside

The Lake Shore Community is a realist rural novel rooted in Hujiazui on the shores of Poyang Lake. Drawing on the style of Wang Yimin's Rural Trilogy, it spans the ten years from 2012 to 2022. Hu Yuanhang, who once made his way in Shanghai, is moved by concerns over food safety and resolutely quits his job to return to his hometown. He plans to lease the lakefront wasteland in the village that nobody wants and build an organic, circular farming base. His decision draws doubts from the whole village. His father, Hu Shoushan, has stuck to traditional farming all his life and firmly believes that chemical fertilizers are essential to increasing yields and surviving. He strongly opposes his son's costly plans to develop organic agriculture. His mother, Chen Guiying, is caught in the middle: she worries that their enormous investment will be lost, while also bearing the neighbors' gossip. His younger sister, meanwhile, wavers between working in the county town and returning to rural life. Hu Jincai, a local large-scale farmer, is convinced organic agriculture is just a gimmick and rallies the villagers to resist the land leases. Clearing the land, building a biogas system, and fighting floods during the rainy season bring years of early losses, with rumors and insults following one after another. After enduring countless hardships, Hu Yuanhang develops a city-based membership order system, bringing organic produce from Poyang Lake out of the countryside. More and more villagers join the project as workers or invest land in it, and old divisions slowly fade. The older generation, so deeply attached to the land, gradually comes to understand modern agriculture. The desolate lakeshore bursts with life, and a new generation of lakeside farmers finds a new way to make a living from the land amid the lake's ebb and flow.