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.

Dr. Huang runs a clinic. One day, Mr. Chen moves to next door and opens a Chinese medicine clinic. In the beginning, the two families get along fine and Chen’s son and Huang’s daughter like each other. But when Mrs. Chen proposes the marriage to Dr. Huang, the conflicts between the families explode.