Five years after living in New York, a young writer visits his best friend with a new novel he wrote.

A mother and her son living amid economic turbulence in the beautiful Chinese green tea-farming landscape.

On a 1980s evening, the topmost clown-actor of the 20th century Sichuan opera, Qiu Fu passes away in an accident and half-unwillingly sets off for the Ghost City under the escort of two underworld officials. Along the way, he meets old friends. As they recall the past, a history of the living is conjured up.

Eighteen-year-old girl Li Qi failed the college entrance examinations. She disobeyed her mother, refusing to return to school to be a returning student. The relationship between Li Qi and her mother worsened. At classmate Xiaowei’s birthday party, Li Qi and Xiaowei had a quarrel. Li Qi smashed Xiaowei’s newly-bought iPhone in a rage. Unexpectedly, her originally peaceful summer life was changed after the quarrel. Facing the crisis of claiming compensation by her classmate, Li Qi chose to hide it from her mother, determined to keep it as her secret and solve the problem alone. And this secret was like a fishbone stuck in her throat, gradually becoming an unspeakable discomfort for her. The bitterness and pains of growing-up come one after another. She began to rethink her relationship with her mother, and her relationship with the world.