Two Chinese miners, who make money by killing fellow miners and then extorting money from the mine owner to keep quiet about the "accident", happen upon their latest victim. But one of them begins to have second thoughts.

Five girls grow up in China during the first years of the twentieth century. When they become adults they have to learn that women are almost without rights. Other women close to them are suppressed in the most brutal way. When Mingtao is to marry a mentally deficient but rich man, she and her friends decide to escape and to search for the mythical "garden" where a woman's life is worth living.