Te-Kuei Cheng

During the Manchu (Qing) Dynasty, a mainland Chinese patriot becomes a one-man resistance force to defend a timber works against the invading Japanese army.

An orphaned girl in a poverty-stricken neighborhood is adopted by a kindly neighbor. He struggles to support her honestly, despite opportunities to participate in a neighbor’s scurrilous get-rich-quick schemes. Invoking the pain of Chinese exiles living in Taiwan, or missing relatives still in China, the touching film posits an in-between historical period during which it is crucial for displaced residents to maintain virtue as a bedrock of identity.