Wo Tu 沃土

Description:

Province G had long pursued a radical strategy of "developing high technology and catching up with the developed coastal regions of the East," which strained relations between officials and the people — a constant worry for Provincial Party Secretary He Li-Bin (Gao Ming). To solve the problem once and for all, He Li-Bin makes an unexpected move: he appoints Luo Han-Sheng (Zheng Xiao-Ning), a doctor of economics who studied in the United States, as city party secretary. After taking office, Luo Han-Sheng boldly carries out reforms, but encounters relentless resistance from within; add to that his bookishness and political inexperience, and all kinds of contradictions intensify. Backed into a corner, He Li-Bin has no choice but to "shed tears while executing Ma Su" — he plans to transfer Luo Han-Sheng to his side for a proper "re-education," but Luo Han-Sheng instead asks to be posted to another impoverished region of the province.
Meanwhile, He Li-Bin is about to retire, and he sees Luo Han-Sheng as his successor, promoting him to deputy secretary of the provincial party committee. Yet in the eyes of ordinary people, Luo Han-Sheng's defiance of superiors, devotion to the people, insistence on facts, and political immaturity have reached the point of pedantry: he invites his father-in-law Jiang Chang-Lin, who lives comfortably in the provincial capital, to Xiakou, and thereby "ruins" Jiang Chang-Lin (Shu Yao-Xuan), dragging him into the conspiracy surrounding the dam. Xiakou's vital water conservancy project, the Xiakou Reservoir, suffers from quality problems caused by corruption among certain officials, and after completion an accident occurs: 150,000 people are forcibly evacuated, the dam is blown up, and the entire city is flooded. Luo Han-Sheng shows no mercy even to his own father-in-law, and under overwhelming pressure Jiang Chang-Lin commits suicide; his wife Jiang Wei (Wang Hai-Yan) leaves home in fury, and Luo Han-Sheng finds himself "abandoned by all." What's more, to uncover the truth behind the dam incident, Luo Han-Sheng does not hesitate to turn his sights on his "mentor" Provincial Party Secretary He Li-Bin, who has done everything to protect and promote him, putting his own career in grave jeopardy.
After the accident, Luo Han-Sheng is entrusted with a mission in a time of crisis and goes to Xiakou a second time for post-disaster reconstruction. Through bold institutional reform he resolves the problems that have long plagued economic development, and he works earnestly to attract capital from the eastern coastal regions to establish processing enterprises, giving Xiakou a completely new look. At the same time, the officials in the series who "hold office but do nothing," the corrupt ones who take bribes, the mediocre ones, the ones who play it safe, and the ones whose conscience is not yet dead — all of them find their deserved fates in this drama. And the emergence of an official like Luo Han-Sheng also fits the current ideal of expert governance in Chinese political circles!