A weathered, speech-impaired army veteran works as a bottle collector and lives in a shanty ghetto with a woman who relies on him to bring back a bottle of saki each evening. One morning, during a collection run, he discovers an abandoned baby girl in a basket with a note that reads “Please give baby Mei a good home.” He brings Mei home to raise as his own.
As Mei joins their modest world, his companion grows visibly upset with the extra mouth to feed and the attention lavished on the child. The next evening, to keep Mei fed, the man chooses a can of powdered condensed milk over his beloved saki. When he returns, his companion strikes him, bruising his eye, and the very next night she leaves him a note and exits, leaving Mei in the care of a willing neighbor. The routine of deprivation and precarious care continues, yet the neighbors rally around Mei, offering warmth and protection that helps her grow.
Mei blossoms into a beautiful young woman, and she crosses paths with a singer–songwriter who drifts through the local bar scene as a duo. Their music draws attention, and a record producer-manager spots them, envisioning a future built on Mei’s voice. But the producer wants Mei alone, not her partner, and the couple’s dreams begin to tilt toward a larger stage.
Mei signs a contract with the producer as her manager, and her image is reinvented to mask her native roots and Taiwanese Hokkien origins. The narrative paints her as the daughter of a wealthy, respectable family that has emigrated to the United States, with Mei deciding to stay behind to pursue a solo singing career. As her fame surges, her boyfriend, her father, and her friends watch from the wings as the world around Mei changes. Neighbors murmur about the loss of the girl they once protected, and the party thrown by her manager becomes a stage where the past is denied and Mei’s bond with her father is overshadowed.
When Mei returns to visit, she is confronted by the reality that the ghetto has been forcibly demolished by city authorities and relocated. A twist of fate brings Mei into contact with the father’s former companion from twenty years earlier, a reunion that hints at past connections neither fully understands. The father, meanwhile, sinks into despair, reflecting on the years he spent raising Mei. Depression and hypertension take their toll as he watches Mei’s concert on television with the neighbors by his side. He collapses and is taken to the hospital, dying before Mei can reach him. His widowed neighbour, with whom he has grown intimate, rushes to the hospital in hopes of catching a final moment with Mei, but she arrives too late, and the moment remains heartbreakingly unresolved.
In the wake of these losses, Mei faces a poignant reckoning with fame and family. She returns to the stage with a renewed sense of obligation to those who cared for her, and when she sings at the end, it’s with a tenderness that honors the man who raised her. The film closes on a somber, aching note, as Mei gives voice to a personal memory in a song that encapsulates a life built from battered bottles, stubborn hope, and the enduring power of love.
> Any empty bottles for sale?
