The story begins in the autumn of 1975, a year before the end of the Cultural Revolution, in Shaanxi province in China (the author's hometown).
Shaoping Sun, an ordinary teenager from a village located on the Loess Plateau in northern Shaanxi, northwestern China, goes to the county of YuanXi to attend high school.
The new governor of Shaanzi province proposes a new Household Contract Responsibility System, which contradicts the core of Maoism.
Futang, a loyal Maoist, opposes the new system but fails; he is depressed by the great turning point of the nation.
Shaoping's younger sister, Lanxiang, manages to be enrolled in the astronomy program at the Northern University of Industry.
After careful consideration, Shaoping decides that he, a disfigured miner, should not marry Xiu, a university student who has great expectations in the future.
The stories chronicled in the novel, which takes place between 1975 and 1985, reflect the drastic political and economic changes happening in China from the end of the Cultural Revolution to the early period of Reform and opening policies championed by then-Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping.