Jin Lin

In the northern town of Qingwu, two neighboring families—the Qis and the Caos—have lived side by side for years. In an age when sons were still prized over daughters, the Qi family’s three girls and the Cao family’s three boys inevitably became the subject of quiet comparison among the adults. When the youngest daughter, Qi Xiang, was born with albinism, the pressure from relatives and the outside world grew so heavy that her parents once wavered toward the unthinkable: exchanging their baby with the Cao family. The momentary impulse left a lasting crack between two households that had once been close. Across the following decades, the six children grow up along the same narrow street—stud...