This family tale spans three generations of Chinese trying to understand and come to terms with life's changes. Middlesome relatives stir up a storm. The old and the young find themselves and their values developing and evolving, and new relationships come and go. The eldest family member, Guan, the son of a royal physician of the former Qing Dynasty, has also become a great physician who is able to predict the exact time of a patient's death. His ex-daughter-in-law, Yu, trained by him to be a physician, still stays with the family as his assistant. Her ex-husband, Jin, comes back from the USA with his new girlfriend, Jenny, a beautiful American who is doing a research on the death of Guangxu, the second last Emperor of Qing Dynasty who is Guan's father's patient. Jenny speaks fluent Mandarin, but she has a long way to go before understanding and getting accustomed to the Chinese tradition and mindset. On the other hand, Yu falls in love with her old friend who is a married man.
After a fierce battle in the plains of Gansu, two injured survivors, a young trumpeter and a girl of the Woman Pioneers, wander in search of their comrades. They are eventually joined by an Yugur girl who has lost her family.
