A story about promotion of the birth control policy in a traditional Chinese rural village.

During the Chinese-Japanese war, an archaelogist finds the treasury of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, attracting the attention of the Kuomintang, the Japanese and the Green Dragon gang.

In the early period of China's War of Liberation the Yan'an Nursey which housed the children of the revolutionary fighters had to be evacuated. Li Nan, an army instructor, guides the group of children to the liberated area in the Taihang Mountains and their parents. Made to mark International Children's Year.

In 1980, Xu Jingshan, a wealthy Chinese-American businessman returns to China to find his son, Xu Lingjun, whom he had abandoned over 30 years earlier. Labeled a rightist because of his capitalist father, Lingjun has been forced to live as a humble herdsman on the grasslands. His bitter life has been transformed by a happy marriage to the wise and beautiful Xiuzhi, and more recently by his rehabilitation by the Party. When he goes to Beijing for their reunion, he discovers his father wants him to work for his chemical company in San Francisco. Lingjun tells the story of his life to his father, as he ponders his future.