The beautiful and dreamy Jin Hsiao-hwa is pursued by the strident intellectual Fan Lin-yu, but is infatuated with the otherworldly Buddhist scholar, the elderly Professor Bai. The love triangle is set in a society in transition, between the quickly disappearing cultural richness of traditional China and the increasingly attractive freedoms of modern Taiwanese society. At the sam time, the country is undergoing major political changes that embroil the trio.