After her father died, a Hong Kong girl discovers she has two hitherto unknown sisters, one in Taiwan and one in China. To settle her father's debt, she must reunite with them to run the family's hot pot restaurant.
This is a story about a common man who has extraordinary events in his mundane life. The film depicts the protagonist's turns of events in three eras, three seasons, three nights, in the same city, as told with reverse chronology.
Kai (Jack Yao), who works at his parent's noodle shop by day and spends his nights in a bookstore to learn French, decides to go to Paris after his girlfriend, who recently left for Paris, dumps him by phone. Then the local neighborhood mafia boss offers Kai a free plane ticket to Paris if he takes a mysterious package with him.
In 3A.D., during the Eastern Jin Dynasty, parents dress a very pretty, very privileged girl like a boy so she may be educated in a local boarding school. There, she falls in love with a poor, but handsome and industrious young man, but their short love affair ends in disaster.
A poor army veteran in Taiwan adopts a daughter. She grows up and leaves him to enter show business. When she becomes famous she shuns her father and friends.
Six female POWs lead an escape from a North Vietnamese prison camp, then join the local rebel forces to plan an attack to wipe out the camp and free the rest of the prisoners.