A man is murdered on a bus for trying to stop a pickpocket; no one lifts a finger to help him. He returns as a ghost and questions the empathy of the onlookers.
In a mountain hamlet in eastern China, a poor woman faces trial after trial. Sold into marriage as a child, she is left a young widow and enslaved by her mother-in-law, who sells her to a poor peasant. Her second marriage turns out to be happy until fate takes away her husband and son. Now seen as a bearer of bad luck, she becomes a social outcast.
