For Zhang Zuo, his father’s darkest moments hold tender memories. Abandoned by his parents, his Nanjing childhood was a lonely one. But when he visits his father, a scholar sent to a life of drudgery in the countryside at the behest of the revolution, the two bond for the first time.
Their paths cross years later when the son is tasked with editing the now-famed academic’s writings, discovering his family’s past, a bittersweet story of estrangements and reconciliations at the mercy of historical turmoil. But it is only by tracing his father’s road that he can understand their lifetimes apart.