Liu returns to his native city Shanghai after 50 years spent in Taiwan. He has come to find the first love of his life, Qiao, who he left behind pregnant. In the meantime, Qiao has married and formed a family. But Liu is determined to get the family's approval to take her away with him.
If money can't buy happiness, can it at least buy control over others? Xiang is hard-working, running a small sesame oil business. Her husband is lazy and drinks; her son is blood simple. When Japanese investors provide capital to expand Xiang's business, she has the wealth to raise her social standing and buy a wife for her son, Dunzi. When money and a forceful personality fail to bend others to her will, including daughter-in-law Huanhuan, Xiang must find another way to tranquillity.
This is to be the last winter for Grandpa Ge. Instead of pining away in hospital, he feverishly shapes his life; an eccentric individualist who is becoming demented, but persists when youths try to sway him. Grandpa wants to survive until spring when the fields are ploughed.
Taxi driver Xian Feng asks her husband Da Ming for a divorce. A legal technicality forces them to remain together.
In the early period of China's War of Liberation the Yan'an Nursey which housed the children of the revolutionary fighters had to be evacuated. Li Nan, an army instructor, guides the group of children to the liberated area in the Taihang Mountains and their parents. Made to mark International Children's Year.