White Deer Plain depicts how two families, the Bai’s and the Lu’s, managed to live through the changes China was faced with beginning in the 1840s, during the late Qing dynasty, all the way up until the 1980s, just after China’s Cultural Revolution. This story incorporates reflections on Chinese national history and traditional culture. A central theme in the book is the decline of an agricultural civilization and the crumbling of Confucian traditions over decades of modernization and revolution in China. The novel is among the best-known works of contemporary Chinese literature. More than 2 million copies of “White Deer Plain” have been sold, as it has also been adapted into dramatic plays and TV series numerous times over the past two decades, and in 2011 its movie adaptation even won a Silver Bear at the Berlin International Film Festival.