In late Qing China, not long after the Boxer Rebellion, a wandering physician named Lao Can travels through Shandong treating patients. His journey—part travelogue, part mystery, part pointed commentary on a crumbling empire—turns him into an unlikely witness to injustice and official hypocrisy.
A state in decline shows it first in the shared systems it stops maintaining, such as the dikes that hold back a river. When flood control crumbles, the damage is both literal and a sign of a political order that can no longer protect its people.
When government turns corrupt, abuse of power and cruelty become routine. The poor and powerless are the ones oppressed and exploited, and women are left with no rights at all.