The protagonists are mainly Huirong, Zhaobai, and Jikan, who have studied business management in the USA and have returned to their hometown, Shanghai. Huirong and Zhaobai are engaged, and although three of them are close friends, problems arise when they find out that their opinions clash on the matter of what the objective for building a new China should be and what direction it should take.

Wanyu (Yuan Quan) has married into a wealthy family but is irresistibly drawn into the world of the movies and famous actor Ah Chuan.

Five girls live together in a Southeast University dormitory in the early 1980s.

Set in the period just after ten years of chaos, several love stories associated with the tourists on a bus indicate more meanings of love.