

47 minSeason 3 • Episode 33
LatestThe story of Song Yunhui, Lei Dongbao, and Yang Xun as they take part in China’s economic reform from the 1980s to the 1990s.
Acting
Wang Kai's slow-burn transformation from idealist to player
Production
Painstaking period detail across three decades of rural China
Writing
Making factory management genuinely suspenseful
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Based on A Nai's novel and banned briefly in China for its unflinching portrayal of corruption; the fact it returned heavily edited makes the surviving version a historical document itself.
The three protagonists represent three paths: the technocrat (Song), the rural strongman (Lei), and the hustler (Yang)—together they map how reform actually happened on the ground, not in theory.