Required to retire from his job as a utility man at a Peking Opera theater, Old Han is at loose ends, wandering the backstreets of Beijing looking for something to correct.
In the last years of the Manchu dynasty: After the murder of the revolutionary Yue Sheng, his two sons are separated. Years later, Yue Feng becomes a rebel leader against the Manchu, but his brother Yue Donghua becomes a bodyguard for his fathers killer, without knowing it.