Wuni Lake Annals

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Features: Most viewers of the film Ambush, adapted from Fang Fang's novel and starring Feng Gong, have a certain impression: the story is interesting, not like something written by a female author. Indeed, Fang Fang has never been an advocate for women's private voices. Her 《》 continues her distinctive style, depicting the painful journey of ideological transformation among Chinese intellectuals from 1957 to 1966, focusing on human destinies. The story unfolds in the Wuni Lake dormitories of the Yangtze River Water Conservancy Planning and Design Institute, where ten small red buildings are inhabited by a group of hydraulic experts—some returning from overseas studies, others from prestigious domestic universities—who came to the world-renowned Three Gorges Project under the inspiration of the Communist Party and New China. They are highly intelligent, vibrant, refined, and self-important, expecting to make a significant impact and achieve great deeds in the national economic construction. However, over the decade following the Anti-Rightist Campaign of 1957, their personalities gradually erode, their enthusiasm fades, their conscience is pushed to the corner of their souls, and their arrogance is utterly crushed. Not only is the Three Gorges Project they yearned to dedicate themselves to still far off, but they themselves have long lost their former brilliance and are filled with melancholy. By 1966, the year of the "Cultural Revolution," they are like frightened birds, terrified and helpless, left to be arbitrarily battered by the storm of radical left-wing politics.
Some plot points in the novel will be familiar to many readers. For example, Su Feicong is mistakenly labeled a "Rightist" due to reasons. His noble yet fragile personality makes him unable to endure this unjust accusation and misfortune, so he resigns and takes his family back to the countryside. His delicate wife and frail daughter become true farmers alongside him. Lin Jiahe is kind, upright, and a good father, but his "Rightist" status leads to distrust of his son, Lin Wntian, who can only work in a boiler room after graduating from university. A sudden accident further worsens his plight, leaving him unable to defend himself. This honest and innocent young man is eventually driven to desperation and imprisoned. The Party member intellectual and leader Huang Fubai also cannot escape the fate of being labeled a "Rightist." His son, Huang Hao, is similarly denied university admission due to his father's "problem" and is sent to a remote mountainous area for the Down-to-the-Countryside Campaign. He is injured by a cow during labor and dies due to improper treatment. Huang Fubai once made the worst possible predictions about his own future, believing he could endure any misfortune. When he hears of his son's death, he is heartbroken and furiously thinks, "I am the murderer of my son. Why did I stand up for justice at the cost of my conscience back then? I haven't lost my conscience, but I have lost my son!"
The protagonist of the novel, Ding Ziheng, has always been cautious and reserved, yet he is blessed by fate, surviving one trial after another and preserving his family and himself. However, by the end of the novel in 1966, as he watches the desperate Wu Songjie jump from a chimney, he feels as though he has already died. What is the difference between a soulless person living and dying?