In the water towns of Jiangnan in the 1980s, Liang Qiusui is pressured by her maternal family to remarry a gambler while raising her young son. After she refuses, they throw her out of the house. Through a matchmaker, she meets Gao Mancang, a hardworking, taciturn boatman. Despite the difficulties caused by Gao's mother and elder sister-in-law, the couple insist on marrying and are forced to separate from the family, moving into a dilapidated melon shed on the riverbank. Drawing on her family's traditional goose-raising methods and skills in making air-dried goose, Liang builds a livelihood from scratch. Together, the couple face repeated malicious attacks from the gambler Lai Dewang and the unscrupulous merchant Hu Guangcai, and survive an outbreak of goose disease. Later, they take the lead in establishing a goose-raising cooperative and help the entire village prosper. By resolving long-standing tensions between mother-in-law and daughter-in-law, as well as between mother and daughter, the family builds a stable and thriving life through sheer determination on the barren riverbank.