A young woman must pretend to be a man to visit her grandfather, and gets into some romantic scrapes in the process.

The owner of the old house Xiangyun Villa, Wu Jishan, died a year ago and has yet to be buried, so the residents of the neighborhood regard the place as a murderous mansion. On the anniversary of his death, his only daughter, Yunfang, returns from her studies abroad, accompanied by her fiancé, Zhang Shouyi, and many of her relatives. Lawyer Song announces his will in public: 1. The distribution of the property is described in the second will; 2. The second will will be announced in three days; 3. If Yunfang is dead, the property will be inherited by her fiancé; if she dies without being married, her nearest relatives will inherit. All at once the people are suspicious of each other and create murder, while all the actions are watched by the servant Lao Cai and Wang Yiping, the assistant of the lawyer Song. In the end, the culprits are caught and Yunfang and Yiping become a loving couple.

Lady Windermere's Fan, Oscar Wilde's play on moral values, is adapted for a setting in Shanghai. Young wife Meilin mistakenly believes her husband is having an affair with a social butterfly and decides to leave for a suitor. Her reputation, about to be ruined because of a misplaced fan, is saved by the social butterfly who turns out to be …Unlike typical Chinese scripts on parental love, the understated familial love in the original play is aligned with Li's preference for the undramatic. Motherly love is portrayed indirectly while emotions run strong yet subdued in the film. Poking fun at social culture of the times, this is Li's earliest extant feature film in a modern setting and a showcase of his modernistic and crisp directorial approach.

During the Taiping Rebellion of the mid-19th century, anti-Qing (Manchu) Chinese forces led by Taiping commander Li Xiucheng march on Shanghai. Although the Western powers are officially neutral, the British consul in Shanghai sides with the Qing imperial government, and counter to his own government's policy he retains American adventurer Frederick Townsend Ward to raise a mercenary force of foreigners in Shanghai and oppose the Taipings. Ward's force is routed, with heavy casualties, but since many of the casualties are British, the British army soon is drawn in on the side of the Qings. The only support for the Chinese comes from Japanese in Shanghai and anti-imperialist demonstrations in Japan. A family drama plays out against this historical background. After a Chinese home is destroyed by careless British shelling, killing the father and crippling a daughter, the surviving son vows revenge but begins to see that his true friends may be the Japanese.

Jiang Danping arrives in a city at night, where often a mysterious man causes panic.