Aboard a bus on a rainy, dark night, a passenger turns out to be dead. Police depend on small details to figure out who killed this man.

Freely adapted from Gabriel García Márquez's Chronicle of a Death Foretold, the film follows the investigation of a local teacher's murder in a small and desperately poor rural village, the story of the crime gradually pieced together from the fragmented memories of witnesses forced to testify at an inquest. Sharing with her Fifth Generation colleagues Chen Kaige and Tian Zhuangzhuang a remarkable eye for the barren landscapes of northern China and a fascination with small-town life — especially those enduring superstitions that Communism failed to erase — director Li Shaohong also introduces several formal innovations, particularly in storytelling structure, that remain unprecedented in Chinese cinema.

The events that take place on a city bus taken daily by workers, students, intellectuals, housewives and schoolchildren are depicted, and the lives of the two conductors, a hard-working young woman and an impatient and lazy man are contrasted.

On Sunday, Fu Ping dresses herself up very beautifully, as usual, wondering who she should date.

When the Cultural Revolution comes to an end and reform sweeps over China, two drivers of the Fifth Iron and Steel Factory set up a pancake stall in the free market in front of the factory, annoying the secretary of the Party Committee.

A 29-year-old assistant engineer is assigned the director of a failing synthetic fiber factory.

During the civil war, the counterintelligence agencies of the Chinese People's Liberation Army fought against Kuomintang spies and saboteurs. Battles are already taking place in the suburbs of the city. Zhang Go-zhong, head of Kuomintang intelligence, following orders from his command, leaves a large group of saboteurs in the city. He hands over the lists of this sabotage group to the remaining resident, the major merchant Cui Xizheng. The PLA enters the city and establishes people's power. But the hidden enemy immediately begins to act.