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.
During the last years of Japanese occupation in Taiwan, as tenants from the preceding generation, the family of Chan brothers was suffering from poor harvest. With a deaf old mother, a mental disordered sister whose husband was killed in war, and a bunch of children, it was not hard to imagine that they were really poor. One day, a heavy unexploded bomb fell down from the sky on two brothers' farmland. The brothers brought the bomb to the Japanese police as a "gift for the Emperor of Japan". Unfortunately, the Japanese were frightened by the bomb and order them to throw it into the sea. They could do nothing but obeyed the order. The bomb exploded when thrown into the sea. A great number of dead fishes came out of the sea. The two brothers collected the fishes back home. When they saw their exciting family enjoy the fishes, they felt that God is fair.
Freight Forwarding Boss
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.
Chin's Father
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.
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 Taiwanese language film
