This Thriving Land

In the late 1920s, in a village in the Lunan region of southern Shandong, Ning Xiuxiu (宁绣绣, played by Yang Mi) is the daughter of the richest man around, Ning Xuexiang (宁学祥). On her wedding day she is kidnapped by bandits. Her father is unwilling to pay the ransom in land, and her sister is married in her place to Fei Wendian (费文典), Xiuxiu's childhood sweetheart.

Xiuxiu escapes with the help of a farmer, Feng Dajiao (封大脚, Ou Hao 欧豪). When she learns what her father chose, she breaks with him and marries Dajiao. She learns farm work from the ground up and begins to understand what land means to the people who work it. Inspired by the revolutionary ideas of Du Chunlin (杜春林), she starts guiding the village women out of feudal habits of thought. The story carries her through banditry and the Japanese invasion.

The setting is rural Lunan, from the 1920s onward, following the Ning, Feng and Fei families across two generations.

The series adapts Qianquan yu Juejue (缱绻与决绝, "tenderness and resolve"), an award-winning novel by Zhao Fade (赵德发), a writer from Rizhao in Shandong. Director Liu Jiacheng (刘家成) said the title comes from a couplet in the novel, "the land gives rise to all things from of old," and also draws on the Daodejing's line about three giving birth to ten thousand things.

Literature and Art Gazette observed that the adaptation softens the novel's rougher, more violent edge and keeps local Lunan customs, such as the granary-circle ritual. Zhao Fade himself said Yang Mi brought his Xiuxiu to life.