A wife yearns for complete independence from a narrow, restricting life in this slow-paced, undistinguished melodrama from mainland China, set in 1944-'45, in the midst of fighting. The young woman works at a good job, nurses her terminally ill husband, cares for her small child, and puts up with a difficult mother-in-law. Her desire to chuck it all is tempered by the need to take care of her family, and as China slowly heads toward the communist takeover in 1949, the chaos of the war around her further inhibits any impulse to go it alone.