The Poplar Promise

Middle-aged Liang Yuan faces an agonizing choice. His wife, Fang Qing, has a tumor and urgently needs treatment, while an old classmate tempts him with money, hoping he will bend the rules at work. Torn between his wife's illness and his professional integrity, Liang Yuan is consumed by inner turmoil. A handwritten-letter assignment from his daughter stirs up buried memories of his youth. Time rewinds to 1988, when fourteen-year-old Liang Yuan hid a letter to his future self in the hollow of a crooked poplar tree. Fragments of childhood keep surfacing. His mother, Chen Xiulan, taught him with a wooden ruler that a person must have backbone and hold the line; as a boy, he stole money from home to rescue a stray cat and was severely punished by his mother.