The story
Zhou Haisheng left the coast of Tianjin for California with nothing but an appetite for the next thing. Twenty years later he has the career, the house, the family and the startup — and then a death alert appears on his own platform, seventy-two hours before launch, and every one of those things begins to come apart.
Told across five parts that move between a Tianjin childhood, the immigrant decades in New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles, and a founder’s final reckoning, A Life Against the Tide is a novel about what immigration actually does to a person: it creates a third kind of existence, belonging fully to neither shore. It is about money and dignity, marriage and betrayal, a father’s death and a son’s investigation — and about the discovery that no country is a paradise and no city hands anyone happiness.
Tianjin, New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles are merely different lands. What does not change is that wherever fate places us, we must keep living, keep bearing it, and keep looking for the meaning of our own existence. from the author’s preface
The novel draws on the author’s own life, but real experience is only the soil. The characters, the company, the secrets and the ending all take on new life in fiction.
Read it, or listen
The app carries the complete Chinese text and its English translation, switchable at any time — including mid-chapter, with your place kept. The complete Chinese audiobook runs 9 hours 12 minutes, plays in the background and on your lock screen, and always resumes exactly where you stopped. English narration is being produced and appears chapter by chapter, with no app update needed.
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故事简介
周海生从天津的海边出发，两手空空来到加州，凭的不过是对“下一件事”的渴望。二十年后，他有了事业、房子、家庭和自己的公司——然后，在发布会前七十二小时，一条死亡警报出现在他自己的平台上，而这一切开始逐一崩塌。
全书分五部，穿行于天津的童年、纽约与旧金山、洛杉矶的移民岁月，以及一位创业者最后的清算。《天津人在加州》写的是移民究竟对一个人做了什么：它在人身上创造出第三种存在——不完全属于任何一岸。它关乎金钱与尊严、婚姻与背叛、父亲的离世与儿子的调查，也关乎一个迟来的领悟：没有哪个国家是天堂，也没有哪座城市可以自动给人幸福。
天津、纽约、旧金山和洛杉矶，只是不同的土地。真正不变的，是人无论被命运放在哪里，都必须继续生活、继续承担，也继续寻找自己存在的意义。 作者序言
小说由作者的人生经验出发，但真实经历只是土壤——人物、公司、秘密与结局，都在虚构中获得了新的生命。
可读，亦可听
应用收录完整的中文原文与英文译本，随时可切换——即使读到章节中途，也会保留您的位置。中文有声书全长 9 小时 12 分钟，支持后台与锁屏播放，并始终从上次停下的地方继续。英文配音正在制作中，将逐章上线，无需更新应用即可自动出现。
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