A young woman urgently seeks to navigate the maze of contemporary Taipei and find a future. She hopes that her boyfriend Lung is the key to the future, but Lung is stuck in a past that combines baseball and traditional loyalty that leads him to squander his nest egg bailing her father out of...
Ah-Ching and his friends have just finished school in their island fishing village, and now spend most of their time drinking and fighting. Three of them decide to go to the port city of Kaohsiung to look for work. They find an apartment through relatives, and Ah-Ching is attracted to the...
Cheng Chu and Cheng Lin are brothers, who grow up in a rather ill-off family. Chu later becomes a gang leader while Lin as a senior high student. Lin is under the pressure of college entrance exams and becomes restive. Ah-Chiang, Lin's boyhood friend deserts the army and runs away with military...
The rebellious and free-spirited Li Lin and the introverted Wu Ai-hua are best friends who grow up together in the military dependents' village. However, they both fall in love with pilot He Kang, their mutual childhood friend. After He Kang is killed in a crash, the village only reminds the...
Ti Hung's parents die when she is twelve. When she is sixteen, she determines to change her fate, swearing to rise from her poverty. She becomes famous for her embroidery and eventually marries into a rich family, but tragedy ensues.
Five young people, Ding-tsu, Mei-huei, Nai-bao, Ching-tsu and San-mao are good friends. They don't like school and always cause trouble. Since Ding-tsu's parents are getting divorced, he feels depressed and decides to go on an island journey. The four other young people and Mei-huei's friend...
Zang Guang-xing is a veteran soldier from Mainland China who married a young Taiwanese woman. He has been working as a supervisor in a construction company for seven years. Everyday he rides the same motorbike to work. He suffers enough misery from riding that motorbike, and dreams of buying a car....
A young man from the country comes to Taipei to search for his sister from whom he has heard nothing during the past year. Beginning in a tenement slum, the young man travels through the city's lowlife, where street hustlers sell fake Rolex watches and other contraband, gangs fight each other, and...