Ah-chen works as a senior assistant for a construction company about to be acquired and merged. Her boss, Mrs. Mei, leaves the company but does not have a new job for Ah-chen, forcing her to quit when faced with becoming a mere secretary. Ah-chen pities her mother who lives as a concubine to her irresponsible chauvinist father. She is determined to leave the confining family as soon as possible and rents an apartment away from the house, giving a spare set of keys to Ah-lung, her childhood sweetheart. Ah-lung owns a cloth shop on
Dihua Street and is a former little league baseball player of the national team. While Ah-chen plans to immigrate to the United States with Ah-lung to join his brother-in-law's import business, Ah-lung is not too keen on moving. When Ah-lung returns from a visit to the US, Ah-chen becomes increasingly frustrated by his passivity regarding their plans to immigrate. Ah-lung is a conservative and generous person who remains nostalgic about his past glory of winning the
Little League World Series and goes out of his way to help Ah-chen's father pay back his debts, help his impoverished baseball teammate get his gambling wife to return home, and help his former lover Ah-gwan settle her divorce lawsuit. He and Ah-chen seem to live in two different worlds, hers a western and modern one and his a local and traditional one. While Ah-lung goes around the city undecided about the trip, Ah-chen gives her sister money to have an abortion and her mother some money to pay off some of her father's debts. She also keeps an ambiguous relationship with a married architect in her former company who told her he was going to get a divorce. Ah-chen soon discovers that Ah-lung had been to Tokyo to meet Ah-gwan on his way back from the US. She slaps him on the face when he comes to her apartment which causes Ah-lung to break up with her. Ah-lung falls to gambling and drinking. When he visits his friend again who tells him how his gambling wife killed herself, Ah-lung severely mocks him for crying. Meanwhile, Ah-chen finds some solace in her younger sister's gang of delinquent youths. She has a good time partying and bike-riding, then discovers that the architect ended up never leaving his wife. When the group goes out dancing, Ah-chen sits to the side and cries. One of the young men in the sister's gang develops a crush on Ah-chen and begins waiting for her in front of her apartment. One night, Ah-chen sees the young man in front of her apartment building and goes to the karaoke bar to call Ah-lung for help. Once Ah-lung takes her back to her apartment, Ah-chen invites him in hoping they can get back together. She asks him to marry her, but Ah-lung declines, saying that neither marriage nor immigration is any solution to their problems. On his way out, Ah-lung sees the young man outside Ah-chen's apartment. He tells him to stop stalking her and takes a taxi to go back to his place on Yangming mountain. The young man follows him on his motorbike, and Ah-lung leaves the taxi to beat him up. The two have a fight on the mountain road, ending in the young man stabbing Ah-lung and riding away. Ah-lung wanders the empty road bleeding and stops to sit by a pile of trash. In the pile is an old TV set which begins to play a news reel of Ah-lung's little league glory. He lights a cigarette and chuckles. His body is discovered the next morning. Unaware of Ah-lung's death, Ah-chen accompanies Mrs. Mei to inspect a new office space for the local branch of a US electronic company she plans to set up. In contrast to Mrs. Mei's excitement for the new prospect, Ah-chen stares out the window at a loss regarding her future with Ah-lung. ==Cast==