A down-and-out scholar Atsai is so disillusioned with life that he tries to commit suicide in a dilapidated temple. At that very moment, a female ghost appears on the scene. As she is on the verge of killing him, a male ghost also shows up. The male ghost saves him, but Atsai gives him a scolding for his trouble. Then they start sharing their woes, and end up drowning their sorrow in wine. Unfortunately, the wine is drugged and Atsai dies. Forty years later, a Taoist priest meets the ghost of Atsai, who asks for his help because he is being controlled by an old demon and cannot be reborn.
Zang Guang-xing is a veteran soldier from Mainland China who married a young Taiwanese woman. He has been working as a supervisor in a construction company for seven years. Everyday he rides the same motorbike to work. He suffers enough misery from riding that motorbike, and dreams of buying a car. So he asks around for decent second-hand cars. His son doesn't like any car he chooses. His wife, a typical Taiwanese woman who lives frugally, shaves any penny she can. She is the one who pays for the family's new car. They go out on trips happily, and become the envy of the neighborhood. Zhang thus gets the new car he's always dreamed of, but he starts to worry about it getting dirty, because it's simply too new, too nice for him. The car thus becomes his son's vehicle. He rides the old bike to work again, just like he has during all these years.
Maid Xiaojuan, part 2
Jointly and respectively directed by King Hu, Lee Hsing, and Pai Ching-Jui, three major Taiwan directors of the 1970s, this film consist of three shorts with the same cast of two actors and one actress, who through reincarnation meet in three different times.
