At a maternity ward in South Vietnam, a midwife adopts three orphaned children after their mothers, undercover Communist spies, go missing or die in action.

A peasant opens a lucrative dog meat shop but becomes a subject of extreme loathing from the local people. When his shop is finally burned down, the man enlists the help of his son and nephews to leave their home and work as sawyers in a logging camp. However, his scheming and cruel nature seems to persist even in the vast forests.

Relationships within a family of illegal loggers gone turbulent when the son starts an affair with his father's lover.

The director of a steel refinery comes into conflict with his wife over plans that might affect her father's reputation.

In early-80s' Hanoi, a director of a state-owned factory welcomes his wife, a journalist, into a changed home after she spent some time away. As she struggles to make sense of their new wealth, he struggles to avoid embezzlement charges by a poor inspector—who turns out to be an old friend of hers.

After a streak of betrayals in love, a scholar harbours a disdain for women and vows to stay away from their “venomous nature”. However, he soon grows increasingly obsessed with a prostitute he encountered one night, and falls deeply in love with her against the prejudices of his social class.

A hard up historian lives happily with his newly-wed wife and her child from her previous husband. But as he becomes more successful and financially stable, the family relationships begin to fracture.

Thang is a Hanoi intellectual and graduates from university with high distinction causing his former teacher, Dao, to invite him to work in a mathematics institute of odd algorithms. He has problems because of his personality and refuses to give up his mathematical perspectives. He distinguishes himself as a person of integrity, which also causes problems for him.