Kuo Cheng

The battle of Red Cliff continues and the alliance between Xu and East Wu is fracturing. With Cao Cao's massive forces on their doorstep, will the kingdoms of Xu and East Wu survive?

In 208 A.D., in the final days of the Han Dynasty, shrewd Prime Minster Cao convinced the fickle Emperor Han the only way to unite all of China was to declare war on the kingdoms of Xu in the west and East Wu in the south. Thus began a military campaign of unprecedented scale. Left with no other hope for survival, the kingdoms of Xu and East Wu formed an unlikely alliance.

A meek, middle-aged schoolteacher is put in charge of a class of trouble makers. Unable to withstand the torments they put him through, he runs away to a Shaolin temple. At the temple, he studies martial arts under the guidance of an old master. With his new skills, he returns to school and whips his misbehaving students into shape.

In Taiwan, a young woman, Lin-Lang, is released from prison after serving ten years for terrorist activity. She had turned to bomb making in grief after her mentor and lover, An Rong, who was also her university professor, was arrested for political activity and, she presumed, executed. In prison, she learns Rong is alive, and she maintains her spirits and sanity for the years in her cell by holding imaginary conversations with him. When she is released, she discovers he is married, has a child, and lives conventionally. She finds him; he's not happy to see her. How she reacts to losing the center of her life becomes the subject of the film.

A multi-lingual tour guide who owns multiple passports one day drives his wife and daughter to a desolate seashore town and checks in a secluded, spacious, ruins-like hotel. From that moment on, he throws himself into gambling, tossing the dice with local residents all day. Sometimes he wins big, but sometimes he loses all. Feeling neglected and uncomfortable, his wife and daughter soon leave him and return home. He stays and wanders in this fishing village and gradually immerses himself in the surroundings—a place rife with immoral vagabonds, outlaws and weirdoes.

Episodic drama from Taiwan. Was nominated for nine awards at the Golden Horse Film Festival.

Three men and an adopted son struggle in Taiwan after escaping China in 1949.