Ah Peng meets a girl named Jinhua at a festival and they agree to meet the next year but she fails to turn up. He searches for her and finds other girls named Jinhua.

Having witnessed all his students died for conflicts among warlords and handicapped during a battle, a painter leaves his troop behind, settles down at a small utopia-like village and becomes a kite maker. This is early 1930's. He marries a local girl who never speaks. A young music student comes and takes the girl's heart away. Suddenly, Japan's war machine rolls into the quite village and everything beautiful is doomed.