Li Rui breathes life into China's monumental modern history in this vibrant saga of the Li and Bai clans - their romances, betrayals, intrigues, and power struggles. Set in Silver City, a provincial salt-mining town, the narrative takes us from the pre-Communist 1920s - a courtly era of sedan chairs and teahouses, white gardens and poetic scrolls - to the student farmers and high-born tractor drivers of the Communist takeover, to the violent liberations of the Cultural Revolution and beyond. Silver City is populated by a striking array of characters, among them Bai Ruide, the challenger to the Li salt empire, who wields such Western weapons as corporate raids and bank mergers; Lady Yang, his scheming wife, who imports a concubine to bear him a son; Li Naizhi, the unwilling salt heir, who abandons his family for Communism; and his sister, Li Zihen, whose self-sacrifice, loyalty, and endurance ultimately express both the suffering and the strength of China itself. For all the characters who come to life in this sweeping epic - Buddhist ascetics and spoiled schoolgirls, revolutionary martyrs and corrupt militarists - future and fortune are prey to China's relentless cycle of revolutions, counterrevolutions, massacres, and bloodbaths.

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