In 1976 Tangshan, Yuan Ni lives in a small apartment with her husband and their twins Fang Deng and Fang Da. Yuan Ni expresses to her husband her desire to have one more child, and they get into the back of their truck after putting their son and daughter to bed. Suddenly the ground shakes, and buildings begin tumbling down. Running back to save their kids, Yuan Ni is pulled back by her husband, who runs ahead of her and is instantly crushed. Their house falls down, trapping her two kids.

In the aftermath of the 1976 Tangshan earthquake, a rescue team informs Yuan Ni that her twins Da and Deng are trapped together under a slab of concrete. Lifting the slab in any way will kill one of her children – lifting it one way will save the daughter at the expense of her son; lifting it the other will save the son at the expense of her daughter. Heartbroken, she is forced to choose between her children, and finally decides to save the boy. Her decision, however, is overheard by her daughter, who tearfully whispers “Ma…” as the screen goes black. The mother clings to her daughter’s body before being pulled away to take care of Da, “her one child who still lives.” Later, in the midst of the rains following the earthquake, Deng wakes up in a sea of bodies, next to the body of her deceased father.

Assumed to be an orphan by the soldiers who found her wandering, Deng is adopted by a military couple. She refuses to speak, and claims not to have remembered anything before the earthquake. She eventually opens up and bonds with her adopted parents. Ten years later, Deng is accepted into medical school and moves away, where she meets a graduate student and begins an intimate relationship with him. In her third year of study, Deng’s adopted mother falls ill. Before dying, she asks Deng to use the money they saved up for her to find Deng’s real family. Deng doesn’t respond. After getting back from the hospital, Deng finds out she is pregnant, and despite being pressured by her boyfriend to get an abortion, she refuses to abandon her baby the way her mother abandoned her. She secretly drops out of university and loses contact with her boyfriend and her adopted father.

During that period of time, Da grows up with his mother, who is still torn from the decision she had to make. The earthquake claimed Da’s left arm, leaving him physically disabled. Rather than sit his university entrance exams, Da opts to make it on his own by transporting people with his bike. He leaves his mother in Tangshan and eventually becomes the boss of a successful travel agency. He marries and has a son, named Dian Dian.

After a 4 year absence, Deng goes back to see her adopted father with her daughter, also named Dian Dian. She apologises and makes up with her father, finally admitting that she remembers everything that happened during the earthquake. She tells him about her mother’s decision, and says that she will never forget how she was abandoned. On New Years Eve, Deng tells her adopted father that she is getting married to a foreigner.

In 2008, Deng sees the earthquake in Sichuan on TV. She immediately volunteers to join rescuers in the wake of the Sichuan earthquake and returns to China. Through the experience, she finds forgiveness for her family, and reunites with her mother and twin brother after 32 years.

Recommendation: 4.5/5
It was a masterfully crafted story of a mother’s love torn between saving only one of her twin son or daughter, trapped under the same pillar during the devastating earthquake of Tangshan in 1976. She chose to save her son, and she tearfully hugged her daughter that she thought was already dead in an emotional farewell before leaving with her son for a safe shelter. The repercussion of that fateful decision had a profound emotional effect on the mother and her siblings. Unable to overcome the guilty conscience of her decision, the remorseful mother lived a life of self-imposed solitude in a small house in Tangshan, afraid to move out because she thought her daughter’s soul may not find her again. Meanwhile, her daughter, given up for dead and lying beside her dead father, woke up from her unconscious coma state, and was adopted by a kind couple from the army. Visibly upset, angry and bitter, she grew up without any intention of ever looking for her mother again. Many years later in 2008, the Sichuan earthquake produced another tragedy on a massive scale. Brother and sister were there as volunteers. There, at a rest point, she heard a man recounting his mother’s anguish about having to choose between saving either son or daughter in the Tangshan earthquake. It was then that she realized that her mother felt equally painful about losing her than she was bitter about being given up in favour of her brother. The act of reconciliation and forgiveness between mother and daughter came at the end in a highly charged emotional scene. Tears flowed from my eyes. It is this kind of act of forgiveness that touches hearts everywhere.

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