Xu Cenzi

It depicts the life of an ordinary married couple, how they overcome hardships together and both mature over ten years. In the 1990s, roadman Chen Ye falls in love at first sight with the department store clerk Li Zhao Di. He tricks her into marrying him by promising her that he will take the TOEFL test and emigrate with her, turning her into a wealthy expat lady. Meanwhile, Zhao Di has been pampered by her family since litte, and her temper comes to light when the newlyweds start living together. In order to help her husband concentrate on taking the test, she takes care of the whole household, but Chen Ye still fails in the end. Moreover, Chen Ye even loses his job and Zhao Di is found out to be infertile. Zhao Di falls into despair and starts questioning whether she made the right decision.

After losing their jobs and facing personal setbacks in Beijing, Wang Meilin and Tang Tian return to their Northeast hometown, where they reunite with childhood friends Wang Jianbin and Gao Mingliang to pursue new business ventures and rebuild their lives.

The film focuses on the suffering of Chinese who were imprisoned in a forced labor camp called Jiabiangou in the Gobi Desert in winter 1960 under Mao Zedong on the grounds that they were "rightist elements". The film tells of the harsh life of these men, who coped with physical exhaustion, extreme cold, starvation and death on a daily basis.

Two women who live very different lives decide to exchange homes. Ai Lin (Vicky Yu) is poor while Wen Di (Cenzi Xu) is wealthy. But when they are both dumped by their boyfriends on the same day, they accidentally meet each other.

In the mountains of Guizhou, quarry owner Yu goes to inform a woman, Maizi, that her husband is in a coma after a quarry accident. But Yu is attracted to the sensual, hardheaded Maizi, and concocts a story to make her think she is indebted to him. The entanglements that follow evoke some of the painful impacts of China's modernization.