Feng runs away from her rural home to pursue singing in Taipei but is trafficked to Japan as a prostitute. Years later, she returns to Taiwan, burdened by guilt and avoiding her family while secretly sending money home. Her brother Ming, now a police officer, searches for her, unaware of the life she now leads. Their paths cross under difficult circumstances, forcing both siblings to confront their past and present.
A has-been newscaster Liu Li-min is taken hostage by an escaped inmate Zhang Zheng-yi, who pleads his innocence. To Liu's astonishment, Zhang claims that he was smeared by Liu's departed wife. Thus, Liu teams up with Zhang and reinvestigates Zhang's murder case to help his beloved be cleared of blame. However, the more they get to the bottom of the case, the further the truth is beyond their reach.
In the summer of 1979, during Taiwan’s martial law period, Bing-Kuan asks her college friend Shu-Lan to help out on her family’s banana plantation. As time goes by, the two girls secretly develop a romantic relationship, and decide to volunteer at the Formosa Magazine in order to promote democratic freedom of expression. Yet their youthful romance is threatened as the Kuomintang regime seeks to suppress dissident voices.