A married couple living in a desolate small town in post-WWII China are paid a surprise visit by an old friend of the husband's.

In a mansion decimated during World War II, a frustrated, bored housewife, Yuwen, is torn between caring for her ailing husband and her longing for a former sweetheart, a doctor who has come to treat her husband.

Fang Xiuying (played by Li Lan) is a female worker in a textile workshop, she and her boyfriend Zeng Qiang (played by Mao Yongming) have been in love for many years, and they plan to get married after waiting for their work unit to assign them a house. Fang Xiuying is a very kind and helpful girl, but no good deed goes unpunished, and her good-hearted nature is challenged at every turn by bad luck and the bad intentions of others.

It is policeman Ma Tianmin’s day off, and his chief’s wife has fixed him up with Liu Ping, a young woman she knows. But, on his way to keep the date, Ma, who embodies all the qualities of an exemplary member of the new communist society, stops many times to help people in need. In a Shanghai fully involved in the Great Leap Forward, will the kind-hearted socialist hero get the girl?

Set in the period just after ten years of chaos, several love stories associated with the tourists on a bus indicate more meanings of love.