Although Hui-Ying is now married to a husband that offers a life of stability and comfort, over ten years ago her first husband (Jia-Hu) fled from Shanghai to Nanyang (old name for Southeast Asia) to escape capture by a warlord - leaving her and their toddler daughter (Shao-Mei) behind in helpless desperation. Despite the mother's emotional attachment to her absent husband, she has never told the daughter about Jia-Hu so the daughter believes the stepfather is her biological father. But the mother begins to have second thoughts about the stepfather when she sees the teen daughter zealously follow the path paved by him - a path that the mother fears will lead to her daughter's moral decline.