Each member of a family in Taipei asks hard questions about life's meaning as they live through everyday quandaries. NJ is morose: his brother owes him money, his mother-in-law is in a coma, his wife suffers a spiritual crisis when she finds her life a blank and his business partners make bad decisions.
A young woman urgently seeks to navigate the maze of contemporary Taipei and find a future. She hopes that her boyfriend Lung is the key to the future, but Lung is stuck in a past that combines baseball and traditional loyalty that leads him to squander his nest egg bailing her father out of financial trouble.
In 1920s Taiwan, Jou, a controversial woman with a tragic past, seeks to change her life after falling for a man named Che. Meanwhile, a man named Wei seeks to buy the freedom of Fumiko, a dying young woman.