Half a Lifetime of Knowing the Times

In 1975, fifty high school students from Luxi County No. 1 Middle School took their graduation photo. The history and literature teacher gave a hand-copied "Ji Ran Pian" to student Lin Wenbin, passing on Fan Li's strategies of Ji Ran, and advised him to observe the rise and fall of the world, to know the times and guard his heart. The fifty classmates then went their separate ways. The resumption of the college entrance examination, reform and opening up, and the restructuring of state-owned enterprises—waves of the era struck one after another. With different backgrounds, their fates diverged: some held iron rice bowls and then were laid off, some plunged into business and rose and fell, some studied hard and entered the city, and some were trapped in the countryside and old customs. The novel uses the bittersweet lives of these fifty classmates over half a lifetime as a group portrait, contrasting their respective rises and falls, and through the ways of rise and fall in "Ji Ran Pian," writes about the joys and sorrows of ordinary people over half a century, as personal fate and the changes of the times are tightly entangled. — Description from novelcodex.orgFull novel: Half a Lifetime of Knowing the Times — read the rest free on N​o⁠v​e⁠l​C⁠o​d⁠e​x⁠.​o⁠r​g⁠