This film tells the story of a love affair that takes place in the Northeast in the early 1990s. Xu Tie, a young and exuberant private minibus driver, falls in love with Lisa Chen, a dancer from a wealthy family, but because of the disparity in reality, their relationship is strongly opposed by Lisa's mother. In order to make money, Xu Tie agrees to help his boss, Erjao, with his deliveries and is put in danger.
Mother Ji Peizhen (Xu Fan) is the soul of this family. She takes care of the family so well, it seems there is clones of her. The home looks orderly under her gaze, but that is not the whole truth. Ji Peizhen thinks her daughter, Li Xiaomei, is the best, however there is other side of Xiaomei while she works and lives in Beijing. Peizhen's husband, doctor Li Wengfan, has been unable to pick up the scalpel due to mistake a few years earlier. With all this, Peizhen thinks she will be able to relax after retirement... But she is diagnosed with cancer. If the mother has only four months to live, how can the family's life continue?
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.
