During a brutal battle in Manchuria in World War II, Major general Lei Yifang, Huang Xiaoming, personally leads a high-stakes assault that overpowers Japanese lines despite stern pushback from his own officers. The victory earns Lei a promotion to lieutenant general, while Dr. Yan Zenkun, Takeshi Kaneshiro), a Chinese field medic conscripted into the Japanese army from Taiwan, is captured and shipped to a prison camp in Fengtian. On the POW train, Yan reads a letter from his Japanese lover Masako Shimura, Masami Nagasawa, a moment that underscores the human toll of a conflict tearing people apart across national lines.
A few years later, as the Chinese Civil War resumes, Yu Zhen, Zhang Ziyi, a poor, illiterate young woman, volunteers as an orderly at a Nationalist hospital in Shanghai and clings to the hope of reuniting with her boyfriend Yang Tianhu, who fights the Communists. At the same time, Lei draws the gaze of Zhou Yunfen, Song Hye-kyo, a wealthy debutante, at a charity event hosted by her affluent family. Their undeniable chemistry leads to a marriage that signals a union between two very different worlds, even as war and social pressure threaten their bond.
The following year, Yu Zhen encounters signal corps sergeant Tong Daqing, Tong Dawei, outside the wedding-studio orbit that linked Lei and Zhou. Tong has brought Yu and a borrowed baby to pose for a “family portrait” intended to secure extra food rations. After the photos are taken, the studio’s owner is approached with an even more delicate request: to craft an altered image that depicts Dr. Yen and Masako together, a fragile fabrication born of wartime desperation. Tong and Yu retreat to a noodle shop, where Tong explains the strange logic of soldier identification numbers and the ways people can be counted as “dead or alive.” Yu’s smile hints at the memory of her lover, but Tong misreads it as something closer to affection.
Zhou, now pregnant, confides in Lei about fears surrounding his plan to send her away to Taiwan. He reassures her, though the prophecy of separation lingers. The Zhou family sees her off on the Taiping, and a photograph captures Lei watching from the shadows, a silent witness to her departure. Tong clutches the idea of a “family portrait” as his comrades pass the image among themselves, while Yu’s own life in Shanghai grows more precarious: she struggles to find work, scavenges discarded fruit, and sleeps under a bridge as the city wades through blackout drills and food shortages.
Meanwhile, Dr. Yan Zenkun reappears in Taiwan, where he and Zhou’s sisters disembark to military bands and nationalist flags. He explains to an official that he was in Shanghai procuring medical supplies, and the official probes his background, recognizing the twist of fate that has brought him home. Yen’s mother burns letters from Masako, a reminder of the painful distances carved by empire and occupation, while Zhou settles into a new house, a space where Masako’s legacy and Yen’s own history intersect through art and memory.
In Shanghai, Yu finds lodgings by passing herself off as married, using the studio photo as proof. She moves into a boardinghouse and then into a club where dancing offers a means to feed herself and, perhaps, to locate her missing lover. The city’s war-drawn energy pulses through the streets as baton-wielding police suppress protests and the club itself is shut down to conserve energy for the war effort. The next step for Yu is a life of prostitution, a harsh route taken to ensure survival while she clings to hope of reunion with Yang.
On the front, Lei’s 12th Army nears encirclement during the Huaihai Campaign; supply lines are severed, and orders to breakout are issued and then countermanded as reports arrive of breakthroughs stifled by the enemy. Lei’s heart aches as he realizes he has wandered back into the same battles where he once fought Japanese troops, this time facing his own countrymen. Up in Taiwan, Zhou confronts a quiet danger of a different kind: a snakebite that lands her in a hospital where Yen, now present as a physician, tends to her. Zhou’s recognition of Yen’s name—reflected back in a painting Masako left behind—sparks a tentative conversation that deepens into a wary friendship between two people bound by a shared longing for loves past and present.
Tong’s care for Lei grows when Lei asks him to help repair a radio, and the two men bond over fragile family portraits that tether their identities to what they have left behind. In the Communist trenches, morale rises as civilians bring food, while in the nationalist lines soldiers grow hungry. Lei, unable to bear witness to more suffering, shoots his warhorse for meat; Tong, on patrol with a fellow enlisted man and a local, shoots a rabbit only to be held at gunpoint by a Communist soldier. The trio negotiates a fragile truce and shares the meal before the fighting resumes.
The Nationalists suffer a brutal blow when the 108th Division defects, and Tong must confront the revelation that a trusted unit has deserted. Lei’s willingness to stand with his men is tested as he learns of the desertion; Tong’s loyalty is put to the test when he ultimately returns to his commander and, in a moment of truth, pleads for the chance to fight on. Lei’s diary—written to his wife Zhou—becomes a symbol of a life he cannot fully live and a memory he cannot abandon. In the chaos, Tong saves Lei’s life, bearing the worst injuries as a tank shell strikes the command post. Lei dies with a memory of his wedding photo in his heart, and Tong is entrusted with ensuring Zhou receives the diary.
Part II
The 1949 Communist Revolution propels three couples from China toward Taiwan, a perilous voyage that ends in disaster when their ship collides with another. Yan Zenkun, surviving the wreck, uses his medical skills to aid the wounded and keep others afloat amid splintered debris. Yu Zhen, who once worked as a nurse, lends her strength to the injured and watches as some passengers are turned against by panic and greed. A small group fights to stay alive on floating debris, while an Australian warship, HMAS, arrives to rescue survivors. Among the rescued, Yu Zhen reclaims a sense of purpose as she helps others and seeks closure with the man she loves, while the notebook Lei Yifang entrusted to Tong Daqing finds its way back to Zhou Yunfen through Yu Zhen’s perseverance.
Four months later, Zhou Yunfen gives birth to Lei Yifang’s son, a quiet marker of life continuing beyond war. Tong Daqing arrives at Zhou’s home with the news of Lei’s fate and with Lei’s diary, a final testament to a life cut short but not forgotten. He offers the diary as a bridge between a mother who has endured loss and a husband who, in another life, might have stood by her side. In the end, the threads of memory, love, and duty intertwine across generations, leaving a testament to the resilience of those who endured the war and its aftermath.
