Northwest Years

The drama opens in 1927. After the April 12 coup, Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalists turn on their Communist partners and the first United Front collapses. Xi Zhongxun (习仲勋), a progressive student from a poor farming family, joins the revolutionary work around him. Inspired by the Weihua uprising led by Liu Zhidan (刘志丹), he takes part in the Liangdang mutiny (两当兵变). It fails, but he goes on to work with Liu and Xie Zichang (谢子长) to build the Shaanxi-Gansu Red Army and its base area.

Xi is played by Wu Lei (吴磊) as a young man and by Jin Dong (靳东) as an adult. Yu Hewei (于和伟) plays Liu Zhidan, Tong Ruixin (佟瑞欣) plays Mao Zedong, and Ni Ni (倪妮) plays Qi Xin (齐心), the woman Xi later marries. The series moves through four periods: the land revolution, the war against Japan, the civil war and the first years of the People's Republic.

The setting is northwest China from 1927 to 1952. The drama is guided by the National Radio and Television Administration and the Shaanxi provincial Party propaganda department, and is directed by Dong Yachun (董亚春). Producer Wang Yong (王勇) told People's Daily that the team began collecting material in 2017, that the script was reworked for six years before filming, and that eleven screenwriters worked on it.

Xi Zhongxun is the father of Xi Jinping (习近平).

On CCTV-1, People's Daily reported, the first episode drew a 2.904 percent rating, the second day passed 3 percent, and the broadcast had reached 462 million household viewings by November 25, 2024. After the run, the production company reported an average of 3.134 percent and 641 million household viewings. The series later won the Flying Apsaras Award (飞天奖) for outstanding television series, the government's top television prize, and the Golden Eagle Award (金鹰奖) for outstanding series. It also took the jury grand prize at the Shanghai Television Festival's Magnolia Awards, Western China Net reported.