The book describes the conflict between an intellectual husband and his peasant wife, and their eventual mutual understanding. The novel is set in Beijing city at the turn of the 1940s and 1950s. The hero, Li Ke, is an intellectual cadre. Although he has been away from the big city for 12 years, he is seduced by the city life once he enters Beijing. He hoped that his wife would gradually change her "rural mind" when she went to the city. While he agrees that cities need to be transformed, "they cannot be transformed to be exactly the same as the countryside." And his wife "Comrade Zhang" is not used to city people's lifestyle. Holding the belief of "transforming the city", she works hard, sends her husband's manuscript fees to the villagers who are hit by floods, and rectifies those capitalists who are still "oppressing people", treated workers kindly. The author uses many vivid details to show Comrade Zhang's "stubborn, firm, simple, hate love clearly, and her "narrow, conservative, stubborn". The author describes the most daily, the most common family trifles, but full of human kindness.