Summary: Human Realm (人境）

Originally published in 2016, Human Realm is the foundational masterpiece that set the stage for the 1.2 million-word epic Black and White (2023). Spanning a twenty-year gestation from the mid-1990s to 2015, the novel explores the "stubborn growth" of the socialist spirit within a modern climate of shifting economic relations.

The narrative follows the parallel paths of Ma La and Murong Qiu as they navigate the complexities of contemporary China. Through the lens of "New Socialist Literature," the work seeks to answer the enduring question: "Where is China headed?". Critics, including renowned writer Zhang Wei and scholar Han Shaogong, have hailed it as an "unprecedented reconstruction of utopia" and a work that captures the "simplicity and dignity" of the human condition.

As the spiritual and thematic precursor to Black and White, Human Realm provides an essential examination of individual destiny against the broader movement of history. It stands as a profound testament to the "Chinese soul" and a comprehensive reckoning of the era's social transformations.

Synopsis of The Human Realm

Part One

The story opens in the year 2000, in the town of Hekou. Torrential rain has been falling without cease, calling to mind the great flood that submerged People's Square not long before. Even the bus stop — ordinarily a noisy gathering place for petty thieves — has scarcely a soul in sight. At this moment, a man of about forty steps down from a bus. His nose is straight and firm, his build solid and well-proportioned, as if carved from wood; yet he carries about him, like the rain itself, an air of brooding shadow. This is the novel's protagonist — Ma La. Led by the minibus driver Bao Xiaoli, Ma La — released after serving eight years for suspected smuggling — finally returns to Shenhuangzhou. The desolation of the countryside along the road strikes him with great force against the beautiful memories of his youth. The village has changed.

In his younger days, Ma La had been something of a local figure in Shenhuangzhou. His father, a fisherman, had perished in Dongting Lake during a flood. His mother had fled with his elder brother Ma Ke and the infant Ma La, eventually taking refuge in Shenhuangzhou with the help of the village Party secretary Guo Dawan and the other villagers, and finally putting down roots there. His mother found employment with the villagers as a seamstress, known for her nimble hands; his brother, too, began working early. Both won the respect of the villagers through their diligence and dependability. Young Ma La was often looked after by Guo Dawan, who lived next door, and became close friends with Guo Dawan's son Guo Dongfeng. Ma Ke had a strong sense of political consciousness and a love of learning; he quickly rose to become captain of the Fourth Production Team and secretary of the brigade's Communist Youth League branch. Ma Ke also frequently borrowed novels from the educated youth Murong Qiu, and the two gradually developed feelings for each other. Ma La served as their go-between, and through carrying books and letters between them, he read widely in the literary classics. But happiness was not to last: Ma La's mother slipped and drowned in a reservoir, and in 1976 his brother died in a fire while saving collective property. His brother's death was a devastating blow to Ma La — not only the loss of a beloved family member, but the blurring, too, of the selfless communist spirit that Ma Ke had embodied in that revolutionary era. Ma La fell for a time into confusion and aimlessness, until he was admitted to the Yanhe Normal College, a school with a long local history.

There he met the second great mentor of his life — Lü Yongjia. Handsome and wildly unconventional, Lü Yongjia had been a brilliant student at Beijing Normal University, but had been repeatedly sent down to lower-level posts owing to problems with his personal conduct, eventually landing at Yanhe Normal. Recognizing Ma La's love of learning, he paid out of his own pocket to support Ma La's studies and lent him books from his personal collection. Under Lü Yongjia's influence, Ma La immersed himself in reading and absorbed the currents of enlightenment thought that pervaded society in the early 1980s. Ma La and Ding Youpeng — a cadre's son who shared his membership in the literary society — were both captivated by Lü Yongjia's erudition and proud bearing through their exchanges with him, and Lü Yongjia became for a time the spiritual leader of them both.

After graduation, Ma La took up a teaching post at Yanhe Middle School. Routine instructional duties filled his days, and it was only when he went to borrow books at the cultural station that he felt any connection with the world beyond. During this period Ma La also developed quiet feelings for the pretty librarian Yan Hongxia, and boldly invited her out. Just when he thought he was on the verge of falling in love, Yan Hongxia's father — a photographer — was imprisoned for assaulting the women he photographed, and Yan Hongxia married a factory director in his fifties. [Some years after the marriage, the factory director was imprisoned for embezzlement, leaving Yan Hongxia alone to raise her son — Bao Xiaoli. A few years before Ma La's return to Shenhuangzhou, Yan Hongxia died of illness.] After this early disappointment in love, Ma La returned to his teaching life. Then one day Lü Yongjia sought him out again. Lü Yongjia had been reported for getting the song-and-dance troupe actress Tang Lina pregnant and had been ordered to resign his post. Moved by the desire to ride the great wave of social change and driven by the enlightenment ideal of establishing a free and equal utopia, he was preparing to leave teaching and go into business. Ma La, regarding Lü Yongjia as his spiritual mentor, joined him in this plunge into commerce, throwing himself wholeheartedly into supporting the venture.

Contrary to Ding Youpeng's pessimistic prediction, the Kunpeng Corporation grew steadily larger. From its registration and early struggles through its first faltering steps, the company faced enormous difficulties at every turn — yet within three years, it had expanded from a single operation in coal transport and trading into construction, building materials, chemicals, and other fields, and its assets had soared from thirty thousand yuan to over a million, making it one of Yanhe County's most significant taxpayers, with a business reach extending from the county outward to the province and eventually the whole country. Just as the two men's enterprise was flourishing, a certain well-connected "Second Young Master" with backing from the central leadership, together with Gu Chaoyang — a former educated youth who had been sent down to Yanhe — approached Lü Yongjia with a proposal to cooperate on a smuggling operation. Lü Yongjia agreed, gambling on the venture — but when the scheme was exposed, the company collapsed. By this time, Lü Yongjia, undone by his dissolute personal life, died of a sexually transmitted disease; on his deathbed he bequeathed his ancestral home to Ma La. Ma La was imprisoned for eight years on suspicion of smuggling. The true instigators of the affair — the "Second Young Master" and Gu Chaoyang — emerged entirely unscathed.

In prison, Ma La endured endless bullying from fellow inmates until, after several years, he was transferred to the prison library as a manager. There he reread the literary classics he had read in his youth; of all of them, Anna Karenina and How the Steel Was Tempered affected him most deeply. These years gave Ma La, now in middle age, the opportunity to reflect anew on his life. Why do human beings live? Should one possess his brother's collectivist spirit of self-sacrifice, or believe, like his teacher, in the enlightenment ideal of individual freedom? The voices of these two men sounded and contended in Ma La's heart without cease. Ma La was no longer young, and the era of that red background had passed with Ma Ke's sacrifice. While he was in prison, Ding Youpeng — by now a deputy county magistrate — came to visit him, full of rueful feeling. After his release, Ma La returned to Shenhuangzhou, the place he had missed so deeply and regarded as home.

By now Shenhuangzhou presented a scene of desolation on all sides. Most of the young able-bodied workers had gone to Guangdong to find factory work; the village was left mainly to women and children waiting for their menfolk to return. Ma La paid a visit to Guo Dawan, who was living in a sentry shelter with a dog named "Sheyuan" [Commune Member] for company, and took up temporary lodgings with him. Seeing the old man — who had taken in Ma La's entire family when he was a village official, who had earned his nickname from his legendary appetite — now aged and frail, Ma La felt a deep pang of sorrow. Guo Dawan's son Guo Dongfeng was now the village Party branch secretary, but apart from collecting the various levies and fees he was never in the village, having settled in Hekou town. Ma La scattered half of Lü Yongjia's ashes along the railway track on the road home, and buried the other half beside his brother. Standing before the graves of his two life mentors, the two men's voices began again to argue and contend in Ma La's heart — yet Ma La himself had grown steadily more mature. A few days after arriving in Shenhuangzhou, Ma La went to see Ding Youpeng. Ding Youpeng, like the Shenhuangzhou villagers, was convinced that a man who had accomplished great things would never be content to return to a small village as a farmer. But Ma La's decision surprised everyone: he simply wanted to settle in Shenhuangzhou and become a farmer.

Ding Youpeng's father had once been Ma Ke's superior and had greatly admired that plain, courageous, selfless young man, grieving deeply over Ma Ke's sacrifice. When he learned that Ma La was Ma Ke's younger brother, he expressed a wish to meet him. Ding Youpeng brought Ma La to his father, now retired and living in a village on the outskirts of town. In the elder Ding, Ma La saw something of that special concern for the country and the collective that had characterized the people of his brother's generation. The two men talked at length about the state of rural decline. Returning to Guo Dawan's home, Ma La told Guo Dawan of his plans to remain in Shenhuangzhou. Guo Dawan handed over to him Ma Ke's diary — discovered by chance — along with the copy of Song of Youth that had been borrowed from Murong Qiu and never returned. In the pages of the diary, Ma La saw once more the image of his brother striding forward into the morning sun.

In honor of his teacher Lü Yongjia, Ma La traveled to Wuhan to find Tang Lina, where he learned that Lü Yongjia had a daughter — Tang Caor. Tang Lina had by now been through a second marriage and run a jewelry shop. With Tang Lina's help, Ma La tracked down Tang Caor in a drug rehabilitation center. Having lived through two stepfathers and having narrowly escaped being assaulted by the second, Tang Caor had lost any sense of belonging in a family; she had started early, supporting herself by singing in bars. But in the course of trying to make money, she had been drugged and violated by a photographer who had lured her under the pretext of taking her portrait, and had become addicted to drugs. When Ma La brought her news of her father, the girl who had grown up without him was deeply moved. Ma La made up his mind to help Tang Caor.

Before returning, Ma La obtained Murong Qiu's address from Ding Youpeng and returned the copy of Song of Youth to her — though the two did not actually meet. Back in Shenhuangzhou, Ma La made up his mind to put down roots there for good. Through self-taught study of agricultural knowledge, he had discovered that Shenhuangzhou was well suited to growing fruit trees and rice. And so the kiwifruit cultivation techniques he had learned in prison finally found their use. He built himself a house in Shenhuangzhou — a house with a windmill — spending nearly all his savings. He had no way back. He had to be like a tree, driving his feet deep into the soil until he grew into a dense and flourishing forest.

Word of Ma La's settling in Shenhuangzhou spread quickly, and his newly built house became the talk of the village. Guyu — once Ma La's student, just returned to Shenhuangzhou after a workplace injury — heard from his wife Huixiang that Ma La had settled there, and came to call on him. In the house he saw shelves full of books and a computer, and was moved by Ma La's example to decide that he too would stay in the village and not leave. Ma La went to Hekou town to discuss with Guo Dongfeng the possibility of leasing the wasteland on the outer bank for farming. But Guo Dongfeng was busy with the furniture factory he had invested in, and Ma La felt the conversation was going nowhere, so he headed home early. Guyu, learning from Ma La that the agricultural tax was to be abolished, wanted to reclaim his contracted land from the village accountant Zhao Guangfu.

Zhao Guangfu's family had originally been classified as rich peasants, but his skill with numbers had won him the position of village accountant. His son did business; his daughter worked in the county. He refused to be taken by his son to live in the city, and was determined to keep hold of the land. With the village's young people nearly all gone to work elsewhere, he had contracted most of the farmland and had become the village's dominant grain grower. Zhao Guangfu viewed Ma La's return with suspicion, fearing both that Ma La would compete with him for contracted farmland and that his influence would threaten Zhao's standing in the village. When Guyu reclaimed his land, Zhao Guangfu was still more convinced that Ma La was behind it, and his resentment deepened accordingly.

Zhao Guangfu's daughter Zhao Manyue brought home her boyfriend Li Haijun — a man more than ten years her senior, and a former educated youth who had been sent down to Shenhuangzhou. Zhao Guangfu was initially opposed to the match, but was gradually won over by Li Haijun's Bt cotton [insect-resistant cotton] and his offer of combine harvesters at half the usual rate. Li Haijun had been Tang Lina's first husband and Ma La's former music teacher; he was now mainly engaged in business. Ma La had met him briefly when looking for Tang Lina. Arriving in Shenhuangzhou, Li Haijun called on Ma La as well. Li Haijun was an enthusiastic promoter of "capital going to the countryside," now employed by the American Duke Corporation to promote genetically modified Bt cotton seeds. And the general director of Duke Corporation's China operations was none other than Gu Chaoyang — the same man who had been involved in the smuggling venture. Ma La questioned whether capital going to the countryside would truly benefit the people or simply plunder them, and politely declined Li Haijun's invitation.

Back home, Guyu — valued by his wife and having rediscovered his dignity as a human being in the countryside — resolved to stand by Ma La to the end. In 2003, responding to the new agricultural policy, Ma La used his own funds to establish the first agricultural professional cooperative in Shenhuangzhou — the Tongxin [United Heart] Cooperative — together with Guyu and several of the village's poorer households. After Ma La's technical surveys, it was decided to convert dry fields to rice cultivation. And so Ma La and Guyu set off for Changsha to purchase the newly developed high-yield hybrid rice variety "Nanyou 2611," developed under Yuan Longping's guidance. At the hostel, Guyu fell asleep clutching An Ordinary World — borrowed from Ma La, already read many times over. On the road back with the rice seed, the two of them rescued a young boy named Xiaoguai, who had been beaten unconscious by thugs to whom he owed gambling debts. Xiaoguai's father had died in a mining accident, and his mother had abandoned him. After summoning the village doctor to treat him, Ma La took the teenage boy in, and Xiaoguai came to live with Ma La.

Zhao Guangfu's long-suppressed resentment finally found an outlet over the matter of cooperative members drawing water through his fields; Guo Dawan intervened in his capacity as the village elder and settled the dispute, but Zhao Guangfu burned with still greater indignation. Ma La attempted to speak with Zhao Guangfu and got nowhere. Inspired by the enthusiasm of the cooperative's members, Ma La felt the weight of his responsibility as chairman. Xiaoguai, living at Ma La's side, gradually began to see in him the shadow of his own father.

As it turned out, the Tongxin Cooperative's first year was a great harvest: per-mu yields surpassed eight hundred catties [approximately 400 kilograms], and prices doubled on the strength of the cooperative's green, chemical-free quality. Ma La's reputation in Shenhuangzhou grew accordingly — which put Zhao Guangfu out of sorts, even though his own cotton harvest had also been good; in response, Zhao Guangfu gathered his own circle and set up a cotton-growing professional cooperative. Ma La and Xiaoguai tended the kiwifruit orchard together, and before the fruit had even ripened Ma La had already taken orders online. Xiaoguai delighted in this work and in the beauty of daily labor, finding friendship too in two hedgehogs he named "Dalin" and "Xiaolin" [Big Grove and Little Grove]. Guyu, under Ma La's influence, gradually became steadier, bolder, and more mature in his work.

As winter arrived, Ma La felt the urge return to work on his book. The village had a tradition of making glutinous rice cakes [ciba] for the New Year, and people vied to invite Ma La to help. Through these close interactions with his fellow villagers, Ma La felt deeply the bond of flesh and blood that tied him to this land. Manyue finally married Li Haijun; Ma La gave a wedding gift more generous than most, and much of Zhao Guangfu's lingering grievance toward him quietly dissolved. For the New Year, Ma La organized and led a dragon dance team himself, while Zhao Guangfu brought in a lion dance troupe; the village was full of festive noise and life.

Winter passed and spring returned. The Chinese milk vetch — not seen for many years — bloomed again in Shenhuangzhou. Tang Caor, escaped from the rehabilitation center, came looking for Ma La, wanting to know what her father Lü Yongjia had truly been like. Ma La concealed the true cause of Lü Yongjia's death, preserving for her the image of a tragic hero and father. During this brief stay, Tang Caor met the simple and kind-hearted Xiaoguai, the sprite-like Dalin and Xiaolin, and came to know Ma La himself — who reminded her in some elusive way of her father. Ma La put Tang Caor on the bus home, but only a few days later received a call from Tang Lina saying Tang Caor had disappeared. It transpired that Tang Caor, overwhelmed by her craving, had re-entered the rehabilitation center. Ma La received the call and went to see Tang Caor as her father's representative. He then went in turn to Li Haijun and Ding Youpeng to ask for help, and brought Tang Caor back to the village; he also promised Ding Youpeng that he would attend the National Sociology Association Summit Forum. With the help of the village doctor Wu Daokun, Ma La resolved to help Tang Caor overcome her addiction, and to return Lü Yongjia's ancestral home to his teacher's daughter.

This national-level forum was an event of great significance to Yanhe County — a small county of fewer than five hundred thousand people — coming just as Yanhe was preparing to be elevated from a county to a city. Although the conference was hosted by the county government, its primary funder was the locally famous Chufeng Group. A major state-owned enterprise, the Chufeng Group had been a pre-eminent industrial leader in the 1970s, but had begun posting consecutive losses from the mid-to-late 1980s onward. It had since been acquired by Duke Corporation and now specialized in producing glyphosate herbicide, forming part of the genetically modified crop production chain under Duke Corporation's control. Although it was one of the largest local taxpayers, its environmental pollution in the area was extremely severe, and had already caused multiple deaths. During the conference, protesters gathered to blockade the gates of the Chufeng Group. Through Ding Youpeng's mishandling of the situation, the protest escalated into a county-wide uprising. Because of the unrest, Ding Youpeng had been set to be suspended from his post, but through Gu Chaoyang's behind-the-scenes intercession he managed to keep his position. Unable to conceal the Chufeng Group situation any further, the only option was to relocate the plant. At Li Haijun's suggestion, following surveys by Gu Chaoyang and Ding Youpeng, Shenhuangzhou was selected as the new site.

From late July onward, continuous heavy rains fell across several provinces — Sichuan, Hubei, Guizhou, and Yunnan — triggering frequent flash floods in the upper reaches of the Yangtze, driving the Jingjiang River close to its flood warning level. Although this flood was far smaller than the catastrophic deluge of 1998, Shenhuangzhou's embankments had not been reinforced in years. In previous years, when such a point was reached, the entire village would have gone on high alert, with the village cadres organizing flood prevention and rescue operations. But this year there was no sign of any such action. Ma La went to look for the village Party branch secretary Guo Dongfeng, who brushed him off with the excuse that no instructions had come from above. Returning empty-handed, Ma La learned from Guyu that Shenhuangzhou had been selected as the site for the Chufeng Group's plant — that the flood was being used as a pretext to force the villagers to relocate. Resolute in his determination to defend his home, Ma La went to Zhao Guangfu, explained the situation, and Zhao Guangfu indignantly agreed to join Ma La in organizing the villagers to fight the flood. After the two went door to door to mobilize, most of the village's able-bodied men took up their posts on the embankment; the whole village turned out, day and night, taking turns guarding the dike around the clock. In the midst of this urgent rescue operation, the town head and branch secretary Guo Dongfeng finally appeared in the village — but they had come to persuade the villagers to evacuate collectively to Hekou town. In the end, all the villagers left Shenhuangzhou and moved to Hekou town. As they were withdrawing, an accident occurred: Zhao Guangfu suddenly suffered a stroke. Ma La alone did not leave; he moved into the sentry shelter where Guo Dawan had once lived. There he settled and quietly wrote the final pages of his book. After the floodwaters receded, each household of Shenhuangzhou's villagers was allocated an apartment unit in Hekou town, and everyone came to accept the relocation as a fact. Guyu wanted to stay behind with Ma La but in the end, owing to family concerns, left.

One day, while Ma La was tending to the flooded kiwifruit orchard, he discovered Dalin and Xiaolin — whom he had assumed were lost. Then Xiaoguai came to Shenhuangzhou too, insisting on staying by Ma La's side. But watching the surveyors beginning to arrive on the land, Ma La himself did not know how long he could hold out. That night he seemed to dream several dreams in succession, none of which he could quite account for: first he dreamed of ghostly troops passing through — yet the helmets of those figures all bore five-pointed stars; then he dreamed that Shenhuangzhou caught fire and the whole village was consumed without exception, and his brother stood expressionlessly at the edge of the inferno, falling stiff and straight to the ground at Ma La's push; and in the last dream he seemed to hear once more the argument between Ma Ke and Lü Yongjia…

The next morning, a white mist rose over the river embankment. As he walked toward the embankment and looked back, he saw a great round sun slowly rising from the east, its light cutting straight through the fog. At the far edge of the mist, he dimly made out a figure walking toward him — like a long-lost family member or friend. Who could it be?

…………

Part Two

Murong Qiu and her former husband Gu Chaoyang had known each other since childhood; their fathers were old comrades-in-arms, and a match had been arranged between their two families. Murong Qiu did not particularly care for Gu Chaoyang, but the proud and imperious Gu Chaoyang had set his heart on her and no one else. When the call came to send educated youth to the countryside, Murong Qiu — fired with revolutionary ideals — answered it without hesitation and went to the remote village of Shenhuangzhou. Gu Chaoyang, in his attachment to Murong Qiu, similarly gave up the chance to enter the military and followed her to the countryside. On their arrival in Shenhuangzhou, the educated youth — Murong Qiu among them — were welcomed by Ma Ke, then secretary of the brigade's Communist Youth League branch. Ma Ke, with his fine singing voice and his straightforward, capable manner, made an excellent impression on Murong Qiu; she often received his guidance in the fields, just as he would often borrow books from her for his own studies. On one occasion Murong Qiu nearly drowned, and it was Ma Ke who happened to pass and pull her out. As the two spoke with each other more and more, Murong Qiu found herself falling in love with this kind and selfless rural youth. But their love was cut short by Ma Ke's untimely death.

After Ma Ke's death, Murong Qiu's departure from the village and her subsequent marriage to Gu Chaoyang seemed to follow naturally. Gu Chaoyang had won Murong Qiu, but felt none of the satisfaction of conquest. Until one day he discovered, hidden in a bundle among her things, photographs of her with Ma Ke. He understood then: Ma Ke had never vanished; he had always lived between the two of them. Under pressure from Gu Chaoyang, Murong Qiu burned the photographs, and the couple was reconciled. The immediate cause of the marriage's eventual breakdown was Gu Chaoyang's affair, which Murong Qiu discovered firsthand. At that time she was still only a junior lecturer; she moved into cramped and poorly appointed faculty housing at the university, raising the young Lulu alone. Not until Lulu had gone to university was Murong Qiu able to move into a better apartment newly allocated by the school.

Now a distinguished professor in the university's sociology department, Murong Qiu seizes the opportunity of a conference in Beijing to visit her daughter — Lulu is studying journalism at Peking University, determined to become a reporter. She then attends the annual conference of the Chinese Sociological Association, held at the Fragrant Hills Hotel. Since China has only just joined the WTO, most of the conference discussion revolves around this topic. The prevailing tone among the participants is an absorbed interest in data analysis within theoretical frameworks; scholars like He Wei and Kuang Xibei, who discuss concrete practical problems from a human-centered perspective, are treated with contempt.

After the Beijing conference, Murong Qiu returns home. Recalling Gu Chaoyang's suggestion that Lulu study abroad, and finding herself growing used to having Lulu around, she feels an irrational anxiety at the thought of her daughter leaving. Back at the new campus, she receives word from the faculty Party secretary Old Yue about a new school policy: institutional operating funds are to be tied to project quotas, with shortfalls resulting in budget cuts. Murong Qiu finds this deeply objectionable, but is soothed by Old Yue's reassurances. At home, Ding Youpeng — who is studying for a graduate degree under Murong Qiu — invites her to join the Yanhe County Expert Advisory Committee. At the dinner following the meeting, Ding Youpeng mentions Ma La — and this stirs in Murong Qiu a deep longing for Ma Ke, that steady and courageous young man she had always regarded as a hero.

During the summer vacation, Lulu comes home, and Murong Qiu inadvertently discovers that Lulu is involved in a romance with the young teacher Kuang Xibei. The discovery gives Murong Qiu a feeling of impending loss — as if her daughter is being taken from her. After Lulu returns to school, the disconsolate Murong Qiu accepts an invitation from her middle-school classmate Pan Xiaoping to attend a class reunion. At this gathering she encounters the vivacious and self-assured Pan Xiaoping, the reunion's organizer; Mao Shaohuai, a poet drumming up sponsorships; the aloof and enigmatic Liu Bei; and Chen Guang, still a factory worker. The reunion draws no one closer; it draws lines between them all instead.

Gu Chaoyang had begun in officialdom, then followed the well-connected "Second Young Master" into business; when the smuggling scheme was exposed, he fled alone to the United States to study finance, ultimately landing an interview opportunity with Duke Corporation. Over several rounds of negotiations he won the corporation's trust, and riding the wave of foreign capital's expansion into China, he transformed himself into Duke Corporation's general director for China. This time he has come to Wuhan specifically to acquire the large state-owned enterprise Changjiang Electrical and Mechanical Plant, and Pan Xiaoping is the leader of the plant's shareholding reform committee. If the acquisition succeeds, Pan Xiaoping will become the chairman of the board of the newly formed Changjiang Electrical and Mechanical Co., Ltd. — which is why Pan Xiaoping is so focused on Gu Chaoyang and so terrified that the negotiations might fail. Arriving in Wuhan, Gu Chaoyang finds himself thinking about his childhood memories of his father. His father, Gu Feng, had once been a bodyguard for Chairman Mao — absolutely devoted to the revolution and to Mao — and had played an important role in the events of the "July 20th Incident." [note: the Wuhan Incident of July 20, 1967, a major episode of factional conflict during the Cultural Revolution] And now Gu Chaoyang has become the agent of foreign capital in China.

When the workers learn that the Changjiang Electrical and Mechanical Plant is to be sold, they mass at the plant gates just as Gu Chaoyang arrives to negotiate — which actually strengthens his bargaining position. From Gu Chaoyang's perspective, this kind of worker protest occurs at nearly every factory, but invariably ends in the workers' defeat, because this is a top-down reform backed by the force of state power. Chen Guang is a long-standing worker at the plant and the leader of the protest. In order to strengthen the workers' cause, he delivers the workers' petition to Murong Qiu's father, a retired engineer. Murong Qiu's father, Murong Yuntian, had been involved in selecting the site for the Three Gorges Dam, and had been so consumed by his work that he had had no time for his family; Murong Qiu had long held this against him. But her father's forthright support for the workers' cause allows Murong Qiu to see something in this father so deeply marked by his era that she had never seen before. Taking the petition bearing her father's signature, Murong Qiu visits Chen Guang — who is still living in the old factory residential compound — and promises to seek broader support for the workers' cause within intellectual circles. Murong Qiu then does something uncharacteristically bold: she arranges to meet Gu Chaoyang, who has just come from a banquet at which the distribution of interests was settled over drinks and toasts. When Murong Qiu accuses him with the words "the people are the masters of the country," Gu Chaoyang's mind is still occupied with the calculations made at that table.

The new annual conference of the Sociological Association is approaching, but the funding situation is difficult and no sponsor has been found. The editor of Sociological Research, Wu Yan, implores Murong Qiu to help, and Murong Qiu agrees. She calls Ding Youpeng, who immediately promises his support. At the gatehouse of her residential compound, Murong Qiu receives a parcel from the Tongxin Cooperative. At the new conference, Murong Qiu travels to Yanhe County once more. At Wu Yan's urging, the two of them climb Bijia Mountain together — it reawakens in Murong Qiu memories of her time as an educated youth, and of Ma Ke, whom she had loved so deeply. Back at the hotel, glancing through the conference papers, Murong Qiu comes upon Ma La's name. She reads his brief paper carefully and is astonished to find that his understanding of the "three rural problems" is fully on a par with that of a professional sociologist. She looks forward to his presentation with great anticipation — but the entire conference is thrown into disarray by the upheaval surrounding the Chufeng Group. At the conference, the positions of president and vice-president have of course been settled through back-channel arrangement beforehand; He Wei — deeply knowledgeable but holding views at odds with the mainstream — is not among those selected. Murong Qiu had herself been the pre-arranged choice for vice-president, but, unable to stomach what she sees, she withdraws from the conference early, making her position clear.

Weary of the fame-and-fortune contests of the academic world, Murong Qiu travels alone to Shenhuangzhou. There she finally meets Ma La. To her eyes, the Ma La before her is indistinguishable from the Ma Ke of former years. She also meets Tang Caor, there breaking her addiction, and the simple, warm-hearted Xiaoguai. These three people, with no blood ties between them, have formed in Shenhuangzhou a temporary "family." On first meeting Murong Qiu, Ma La is briefly overwhelmed by an old shame — the memory of watching her swim in secret when he was a boy — but he reflects that people change with the passage of time. He opens his heart; he becomes at last a wholly new person, capable of accepting and embracing love. On the morning of Murong Qiu's second day in Shenhuangzhou, she goes first thing to stand before Ma Ke's grave. At last she finds the courage to face Ma Ke, and speaks from the depths of her heart — a soliloquy addressed to Ma Ke and to the era he represented.

The university has issued a new teacher evaluation standard, tying each faculty member's professional title assessment, salary, and bonuses to the number of funded projects they apply for, with anyone falling short barred from that year's title review and salary increases, and those falling short for three consecutive years not having their contracts renewed. Murong Qiu opposes fiercely this reduction of the person to a set of quantifiable metrics. Three days after the standard is announced, she resigns her position. Returning home, she suddenly receives news that her father is critically ill; after his burial, she reads in the Yangtze Daily the news that the Changjiang Electrical and Mechanical Plant has been acquired by Duke Corporation. Not long after Lulu comes to pay her respects at her grandfather's funeral, she and Kuang Xibei accept a commission from a social organization and travel to Yunnan to serve as communications officers for a large-scale poverty alleviation initiative. Murong Qiu fully supports both her daughter's love and her ambitions.

A few days later, Murong Qiu receives an invitation sent by Tang Caor. Having successfully broken her addiction, Tang Caor has converted the ancestral home that Lü Yongjia left her into a children's music school. The sight of Tang Caor, radiant and full of life, fills Murong Qiu with deep satisfaction and stirs in her memories of her own childhood visits here with her aunt and her cousin Lü Yongjia. Before parting ways the last time in Shenhuangzhou, Murong Qiu had a long conversation with Ma La. His understanding of the "three rural problems" had astonished her. In her eyes, Ma La was like one of those Russian Populist intellectuals of the late nineteenth century: his concerns extended far beyond the "three rural problems" — they encompassed all of China's contradictions. And so she made up her mind: she could not go on staying in that "academic circle" exhaling its odor of decay. Next semester she would take her graduate students to Shenhuangzhou and conduct a genuine fieldwork investigation.