In the puppet state of Manchukuo in the 1930s, four Communist party special agents, after returning to China, embark on a secret mission. Sold out by a traitor, the team find themselves surrounded by threats on all sides.

Ding Mao, a supermarket employee, accidentally cooks the ornamental shark kept in the store. Soon after, he starts hearing a strange voice. Travelling from a southern city to the wilds of Northeast China, he sets out to trace his father’s whereabouts. During this journey, he pieces together his father’s bizarre life through an abandoned amusement park, a zoo in winter, and the supermarket where shark meat is sold. A quirky experimental musician, a blind fortune-teller who can understand animal language, a trainer whose legs were bitten off by a shark, and a female picture book painter — guided by the mysterious voice, all these souls become intertwined.