Adored by his grandmother, Ah-ha shares his childhood with siblings while his father, who had planned to return to China, dies in a foreign land. As a teenager, he gets caught up in street fights and nurtures a crush on a local girl. When illness strikes his family, he faces death for the first time, struggling to balance filial duties with the harshness of street life. Director HOU Hsiao-hsien's poetic New Cinema style transforms this autobiographical tale into a timeless reflection of an era.