A Taiwanese language film

A-yuan and A-yun are both from the small mining town of Jio-fen. They move to Taipei, where A-yuan is an apprentice by day and goes to night school, and A-yun works as a helper at a tailors. Everyone thinks they are meant for each other, and so do they. They fail to see time and fate are beyond their control.

The Ming Dynasty was the ruling dynasty of China for three centuries. During its reign it encountered numerous rebellions. It is during just such a time that the small state of Yun finds itself caught between the two sides of an impending rebellion. The state of Yun must decide if it should rebel and align itself with the 8 Masters, or if it should stay loyal to the Emperor and the 4th Imperial Prince, Kao Ming.

A business man / traveling salesman gets stranded in a small village and interacts with many townspeople. The story follows the lives of many families and individuals in the town, and depicts the political, social, and economic diversity of the characters, and how their lives are all intertwined in rural Taiwan.

A young woman urgently seeks to navigate the maze of contemporary Taipei and find a future. She hopes that her boyfriend Lung is the key to the future, but Lung is stuck in a past that combines baseball and traditional loyalty that leads him to squander his nest egg bailing her father out of financial trouble.

In 1940s Taiwan, during the last days of Japanese rule, an impoverished farming village is less concerned with colonial politics than with feeding their families. One day, an American bomb falls onto a field, where it lies unexploded.