A down and out man and his daughter live in an illegal hovel. The two live a happy peaceful life until the authorities intervene when the child reaches school age.

The film, adapted from the Chung Chao-Cheng novel of the same title, Song of Chatian Mountain, depicts the intellectual tyranny of the occupiers at the end of the Second World War and the way that educated persons resisted the war. A Taiwanese man, Lu Zhixiang, well educated in Japan and a judo master, returns to Taiwan to live up to his high ideals.

When a band of kidnappers attempts to collect a ransom for their young hostage, the boy’s family dismisses it as a prank. Stuck with a youngster to care for and on the lam, the stage is set for a dark comedy of errors. We get this and much more with delicious plot twists and a growing pile-up of fraud and double crosses.

The sudden arrival of Han provides a diversion from Ching's monotonous life as the proprietor of the family clock shop. She quickly falls in love with the young man who claims to be her high school classmate, but her bliss proves short-lived as he disappears just as abruptly. Worried, Ching calls Han's parents, only to be told that he died many years ago.

When a single-father mechanic bumps into a pungent massage girl, a buzzard encountering becomes a marginal romance.