Night of an Era

A Chinese leukaemia patient smuggles cheap but untested pharmaceuticals from India to help hundreds of Chinese people suffering from cancer.

The first half of this film portrays the experiences of a young northern mainland Chinese woman (Fan) temporarily working as a sex worker in Hong Kong. After her 3-month visa expires, the second half of the film focuses on Yan's return to her family and her ex-fiancé in Northeast China and the ways that she invests the money that she has earned.

The film follows a family in the central Chinese city of Chongqing made up of retired policeman Li (He Xingquan), his second wife Zhang (Guan Jiangge) and their two sons from former marriages. Neither of the younger generation are doing too well, with Li’s son Jianjun (Liao Zhong) working long hours as a taxi driver, putting strain on his new marriage, and Zhang’s son Xiaolei (Xu Tao) running wild with a gang of hooligans. After Li is sent the ashes of his ex-wife, he begins the search for a new family burial plot, at the same time trying to hold their lives together.

Tang Lin, a novelist who has been grappling with writer’s block for several years. Yet, a book written under her name – The Zodiac Mystery – appears in markets. Even more strangely, the people in the book bear the names of her childhood friends and experience situations that really happened to them. What’s worse is that the book writes of a mistake that the friends have kept secret for years.

Xinxin and Tingting are two girls living in Beijing. Xinxin is the daughter of rich parents, Tingting, a country girl, works on a phone sex-line. Although the two girls don’t know each other in real life, they have a close relationship on the Internet, although Tingting poses as a boy.