Set in the early summer of 1941 at the Ivanov International School in Moscow, Luo Xiaoman, Xiaoling Xu, and ChuChu, Guo Keyu, arrive as new students from China in the wake of the brutal White Terror that claimed their families. They quickly learn to fit in with the other international students and pick up Russian fluently.
When summer comes, several students, including ChuChu, left for a summer camp in Belarus with their teacher, Miss Vera. Xiaoman remains behind in Moscow as the city bears the weight of a looming war. Soon after, Nazi Germany invades the Soviet Union and Moscow is half evacuated, plunging the city into chaos. For a time, Luo Xiaoman endures the harsh reality of life on the streets, barely surviving as a homeless child who begs, steals, and even sells blood to obtain food, only to be robbed by others in turn. He eventually finds work delivering condolence letters to families of fallen soldiers. In one apartment, he encounters an orphaned girl whose mother died from starvation and illness, and he takes her in as if she were his own daughter.
The summer camp story unfolds with danger and heartbreak. Captured by German invaders, ChuChu and her classmates are kept as slaves and live in constant peril. Miss Vera is murdered in front of the students for defying their German captors, a brutal act that shatters the group. A classmate named Karl, who is half-German and harbors affection for ChuChu, uses his Aryan identity to gain a German soldier’s trust and steals an MP 40 submachine gun, enabling a brief escape for the others. Yet Karl is soon wounded, cornered, and machine-gunned to death in a forest pit. The remaining students face retribution and a death sentence by hanging, with an old man and one girl executed by firing squad. In the end, ChuChu and a few others are spared when a high-ranking German officer, General Von Dietrich, arrives and has them sent to work as servants at Nazi headquarters housed in the Yakovlev Monastery.
General Von Dietrich (Vladmill Nizmiroff) is more than a military commander; he is portrayed as a perverted doctor who treats tattooing as a dark hobby, engraving heraldic designs on the bodies of young girls and parading them to guests at his parties. He views ChuChu as his ultimate “masterpiece.” Ironically, his own empire is crumbling, and he decides to spare ChuChu’s life only to use her as a horrific symbol of his work. He ultimately dumps her in a field so that this “masterpiece” can survive the chaos while he takes his own life. The enormous Nazi eagle tattoo on ChuChu’s back becomes a lasting stigma, marking her with discrimination and shame that echo long after the war.
Meanwhile, Luo Xiaoman aims to join the Soviet Red Army expeditionary force but is turned away due to his young age. His fury toward the Nazi invaders grows, driving him to take a desperate revenge: he begins sniping German prisoners with a home-made slingshot. When the German POWs riot, he lures them into a ruined apartment building and ignites oil tanks, causing a fatal blast that takes his life along with the rioters.
In the final act, ChuChu is reunited with the orphan girl Luo Xiaoman had taken in. Hearing the same speech Xiaoman once gave in his Russian class, ChuChu finally understands, embraces the girl, and breaks down in relief and sorrow. The camera lingers on the tattoo and the scar on ChuChu’s back, tangible reminders of what she endured. The closing credits reveal that a skin graft to remove the tattoo was not successful, and they recount the real ChuChu and the path her life took after these events.
