After her mother Li Huanying is fatally injured in a car accident in 2001, grief-stricken Jia Xiaoling finds herself transported back in time to the year 1981, where she becomes her mother's close friend. Jia Xiaoling feels that she has not been a good enough daughter in the present, so back in 1981 she does all she can to make Li Huanying happy, including setting her up with a factory manager's son, Shen Guanglin, in the hope of giving her mother a better husband, a better daughter, and a better life than she had the first time around.
Yan is a bank employee who is strict and prudent at doing things. But he is really considered as a weirdo by colleagues. The bank is selected as the place that takes part in a bank robbery and annihilation maneuver, and Yan applies to act as the robber.
Set in the Shaanxi province of Northern China, In The Wild Mountains is a simple yet insightful tale of village life and how economic changes in the country affect even the most remote regions.