Professor Ren Xinzheng resigns to start a mentoring class for traditional Chinese medicine, hoping to train true successors. His students—Sun Toutou, his son Ren Tianzhen, lawyer-turned-student Yang Xiaohong, pediatrician Peng Shiyan, and aspiring doctor Zhao Liquan—struggle to get along, but must work through their differences to preserve the legacy of Chinese medicine.
Chen Jianxia, a girl who lived in a patriarchal environment since she was a child, longs to escape from the oppressive family. She is admitted to Zhenhua Middle School, where she meets the rebellious but kind-hearted boy Li Ran. Li Ran becomes the only light in her life. She is like a forgotten spaceship in the universe, and he is the only answer in the radio that has been silent for many years.
A story that details the the lives of ordinary civilians amidst the magnanimous changes in Chinese society over the years. At the end of the 1970s, the Zhou family lived in a provincial city in the north. The father, Zhu Zhi Gang, has just participated in the Third Front Movement in Xi Nan. The eldest son, Zhou Bing Yi, responds to a national call to become part of the first batch of "educated" youths sent to live and work in rural areas. The eldest daughter, Zhou Rong, follows her poet husband to the countryside of Guizhou. The youngest son, Zhou Bing Kun, is the only one left at home with their mother. In the span of 50 years, the Zhou family is swept by the tides of change in China.
