In China, during the Cultural Revolution, a young girl's parents are thrown in jail for ten years. She is raised by her grandfather. He introduces her to gymnastics where she does her best to fit in with the others.
The painless bruise marks on a child from the traditional Chinese guasha/scraping treatment was mistaken by child protection services as evidence of abuse and neglect, stirring clashes and debates on cultral prejudice and false philanthropy.
This family tale spans three generations of Chinese trying to understand and come to terms with life's changes. Middlesome relatives stir up a storm. The old and the young find themselves and their values developing and evolving, and new relationships come and go. The eldest family member, Guan, the son of a royal physician of the former Qing Dynasty, has also become a great physician who is able to predict the exact time of a patient's death. His ex-daughter-in-law, Yu, trained by him to be a physician, still stays with the family as his assistant. Her ex-husband, Jin, comes back from the USA with his new girlfriend, Jenny, a beautiful American who is doing a research on the death of Guangxu, the second last Emperor of Qing Dynasty who is Guan's father's patient. Jenny speaks fluent Mandarin, but she has a long way to go before understanding and getting accustomed to the Chinese tradition and mindset. On the other hand, Yu falls in love with her old friend who is a married man.
A young boy named Chen Xiang uses a magical lotus lantern to search for and rescue his mother, a goddess, from the cruel punishment she received from her brother, the king of the gods, for falling in love with a mortal man.
The film illustrates classical Beijing Opera in different generations and the boy’s process of growing-up.
Zhu Xu (Chinese: 朱旭) is a Chinese actor. He is well known for his roles in Zhang Yang's Shower and Wu Tianming's The King of Masks, the latter film helping him garner a Best Actor prize at the Tokyo International Film Festival.
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