Gongmu township, central China, autumn 1982. After graduating from university, and as part of his "grassroots" government training, Guan Yubo (Lu Fangsheng) is assigned to the remote, mountainous township of the Tujia ethnic minority to work as its publicity/education officer. Xiang Yu'e (Li Shutong), his girlfriend from college, has to remain in the city. Yubo works directly under the mayor, whose current government challenge is to meet birth-control quotas. Feeling lonely, Yubo befriends an old cook, Tian, who used to be a teacher but whose career was destroyed by an anti-rightist campaign. One day Yubo bumps into his secret first love from high school, Cheng Liwen (Yang Caiyu), who happens to be in the township working in a local shop. She's polite but uncommunicative. Unlike Yubo, she didn't manage to get into university, due to her family's political problems. Later, the two of them visit her father, who now lives alone in the mountains, making wooden birdcages. Gradually the two... Written by LEVI

An innocent love triangle set in the senior year of high school. The protagonist forged an innominate love letter to his best friend as a practical joke. The friend took the love letter seriously, and it affected him greatly. To help his friend get back to normal, the protagonist asked the Hongying, a girl who he secretly has a crush on, pretending to be the author of letter. Ultimately this idea backfired, his best friend suffered from a nervous breakdown and lost his opportunity in the University Entrance Exam. After graduation, Hongying confessed she first agree to help the protagonist because she liked him. However, she gradually realized after getting to know him that she was only in love with the idea of him from a distant. While the protagonist is handsome and kind, he was too coward to confess to his best friend about what the truth about what he did.