Sang Hu

Young widow Fan Ruhua feigns the daughter of a tycoon and solicits husbands on papers. But Fan bumped into Yang Xiaomao, a barber, who similarly pretends to be a suiter for a broke businessman to court a daughter from a wealthy family. After a series of misunderstandings, Yang and Fan finally give up vanity and live honest lives.

A man who becomes wealthy starts to have an affair and though his wife knows of it, she says nothing. Soon, the affair starts to have consequences and his business falls apart while the man’s sister starts to have a relationship with the brother of his wife.

Steelworker Ding Da-gan suffered severe burns in an accident. The victim's condition was almost hopeless, but people from all over the country rallied to save Ding Da-gan's life, and death receded.

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.

In 1930's Shanghai, Wu Sunpu, chief executive of the Shanghai Yuhua Silk Company, faces many struggles: with plant workers, with strikers, others in his industry, and most of all with bourgeois comprador Zhao Botao. Capitalists and other figures in Shanghai's industrial and commercial community come and go. The strategy finally comes down between Wu and Zhao. Zhao plans to take over Wu Sunpu's plant with support from Americans. Wu faces a choice of surrender to Zhao or bankruptcy. He considers suicide, but decides to go on vacation with his wife on Mount Lushan. When they leave Shanghai at midnight, Wu paces the deck of the ship, reviewing his life and fate.

Chen Shaochang (Shi Hui), a primary school principal widowed at a young age, raises his children alone. His close friend's daughter, Liu Minhua (Zhu Jiachen), whom he hasn't seen for many years, begins working at the primary school through his introduction. Chen Shaochang's son, Jianzhong (Han Fei), and daughter-in-law, Feng Lijun (Li Huanqing), consider Chen's job undignified. After retiring, he is filled with melancholy, understood only by Minhua. Although their relationship deepens, they must contend with the ethical and social norms of Republican-era Shanghai.

A magician comes back to Shanghai to find his son separated twenty-five years ago.