Synopses & Reviews
A bestseller in China with more than 1 million copies sold.
Yichang municipality, Hubei province, China, early 1970s. High-school student Jingqiu is one of many educated urban youth sent to the countryside to be re-educated under a dictate from Chairman Mao. Jing's father is a political prisoner somewhere in China, and her mother, a former teacher branded as a capitalist, is now reduced to menial work to support Jing and her two younger siblings. When Jing arrives with a group at Xiping village in the Yangtze River's Three Gorges region, she meets geology student Jianxin, nicknamed Old Three, who is the son of a high-ranking military officer, but whose mother committed suicide after being branded a rightist. Despite their disparate social backgrounds and a political atmosphere that forbids the relationship, Jingqiu and Jianxin fall desperately in love. But their budding romance is cut short by fate . . .
Review
The stuff of Romeo and Juliet . . . This book should be read.” Globe and Mail
Moving.” Financial Times
The novel is rewarding for its spare prose and subtle treatment of conflicts, quarrels, racial ambiguities and acts of transcendent heroism woven into the story . . . There are doomed love stories, amid the tragedies, but they are dawn from a deeper well and speak to the persistence of humanity in the grimmest of circumstances.” The Guardian
About the Author
Ai Mi: Ai Mi is a pseudonym. She lives in the United States, and grew up in China.