History of filmmaking in China from its beginnings in the 1920s to 1982, featuring Shanghai cinema of 1930s; the progressive filmmakers; the organisation of filmmaking under the post-war communist government; the impact of the Cultural Revolution; the work of Xie Jin.
With the fishermen's life on the southeastern coast in the early 1960s as its background, the film depicts a group of militia women who work both as fisher women and fighters defending their homes and the motherland.
