Cheng'an's River

Set against the backdrop of the nationwide frontier support movement in the 1960s, this novel spans half a century, telling the story of Beijing youth Lu Cheng'an's lifelong dedication. At age 12, inspired by tales of frontier construction in class, he resolves to join the Ningxia Construction Corps to reclaim wasteland for the nation, and begins writing the novel 'Duliutan', aiming to record the youth and passion of a generation of builders through words. He abandons further education to head west, detours to an ancient town in Hunan, where he bonds with Liu Wanqing over poetry, infusing his writing with vivid soul. Arriving at the construction corps by the Yellow River, he matures through the toil of land reclamation and meets his lifelong wife Shen Qinglan. Amidst the tides of change, Cheng'an's life takes many turns: he works as a furnace man in a Luzhou crane factory, enters university after the gaokao restoration to become a teacher, serves as a greening team instructor in Suzhou, and later ventures into business. Yet he never stops writing. The title 'Cheng'an's River' symbolizes the rivers he traverses—the Xiang River, the Yellow River, and the river of time—as well as his unwavering commitment to family and country, and his ceaseless literary flow, capturing the rise and fall of a generation in sync with their era.