Northern China, 2004. When miner Zhang Baomin returns to his home, a small and isolated mining village, his wife tells him that their son has mysteriously disappeared while shepherding his small flock.

The film is a true re-creation of the fifty-sixth century, when the new China was in a state of complete disarray and the country was embarking on a vigorous socialist rural co-operative movement. The young writer Liu Qing resigned from his cadre position in Beijing and was determined to take part in the process himself, creating an epic work that reflected the collective enterprise of the socialist people. He spent fourteen years on the front line of rural construction, and in the face of various movements and difficulties in building agricultural co-operatives, he took up the cause with the peasants and opened up a new situation for the socialist cause in the countryside, creating the first part of The History of Entrepreneurship, which was a national sensation when it was published.