Spring After Spring

Sold for two jin of millet during a devastating famine, eight-year-old A-Xi enters Yichun House with only the fiercely loyal Zhao Si at her side.

Across years of loss, friendship, betrayal, and revenge, she watches women condemned by class and custom struggle to claim the one thing the world denies them: the right to choose their own lives.

When old dynasties and old cages finally begin to crumble, A-Xi must decide what freedom means—and whether returning home can ever restore what was taken from her.