A Long Scroll of Nanshan

Title: The Southern Mountain Chronicle

Positioning: A sweeping ensemble novel of several million words about people who came from the mountains of southern Zhejiang: how their era carried them forward, how desire pulled them in different directions, and how they put down roots, lost their way, awakened, and looked back in the city.

Overall Structure

Volume One: The Mountain Gate Opens. This volume follows young people from southern Zhejiang, born in the 1970s and 1980s, as they leave poor mountain villages for the cities. Some study, some take factory jobs, some go into business, and some stay to tend the mountains.

Volume Two: Rising Towers, Surging Tides. This volume follows the waves of the era: real estate, manufacturing, the internet, finance, e-commerce, and foreign trade. The characters enter different industries, and their lives begin to diverge.

Volume Three: Lights in Every Home. This volume follows them as they buy homes, start families, launch businesses, fail, divorce, and reunite in Hangzhou, Jinhua, Wenzhou, Shenzhen, Shanghai, and elsewhere. Each has a family, debts, secrets, and wounds of their own.

Volume Four: The Southern Mountain of the Heart. They return to southern Zhejiang and see empty villages, elderly people left behind, barren mountains, and old houses. They begin to reconsider wealth, their hometowns, family ties, and the meaning of life.

Volume Five: The Chronicle Goes On. The next generation continues to leave the mountains, while the older generation grows old. The mountains remain, people keep moving, and the story never truly ends.

Character Structure

Each chapter can focus on one person, or bring different characters together through a shared event. A class reunion, a funeral, a flash flood, a demolition, a homecoming to start a business, or the renovation of an old house can all connect many people.