Fifty years of modern Chinese history (1900-1950), including wars, revolutions and corrupt politics, as seen through the life and times of a simple Beijing policeman and his family.
A street-wise and tough orphan called Maverick is arrested for a petty theft and sent to an orphanage, but succeeds in concealing a watch he had stolen from an old shopkeeper just before his arrest. At the orphanage, he is recruited by a crooked warder for further and more serious crimes. But when...