Synopsis
1985. Fresh out of prison, Lin Mei returned to her village to find every door shut — even her own family's. The one person she noticed was her niece Xiaoxue, a dropout wasting away at home. Lin Mei hauled her to the city, taught her to earn, and shoved a ten-yuan note at her: get back to school. Roasting sunflower seeds, she caught the wave of reform and opening-up, lifting her family from poverty. Then she set hiring rules that favored families who educated their daughters — forcing an entire village to rethink what girls were worth. Xiaoxue fought her way from village dropout to Zhejiang University. One woman changed a girl, a family, a village — and proved the raw power of four words: study hard, rise higher.