With its lush and lusty portrayal of peasant life, it immediately vaulted Zhang to the forefront of the Fifth Generation directors.

The film takes place in a rural village in China's eastern province of Shandong during the Second Sino-Japanese War.

She was a poor girl who was sent by her parents into a pre-arranged marriage with an old man, Li Datou, who owned a sorghum wine distillery and who had leprosy.

Jiu'er runs away at first, but when the bandit takes off his mask and reveals himself to be her bearer and rescuer, she stops resisting his pursuit and has sex with him.

Nothing is proven, however, and since Jiu'er's late husband was without heir, it is she who takes ownership of the distillery, which has recently fallen on hard times.

One day, Jiu'er's lover and the narrator's grandfather becomes drunk and loudly insists to the group of men accompanying him that he is going to share her bed.

In the early dawn, they hide themselves in the sorghum field, prepared to ambush the Japanese military vehicles the moment they pass by.

[2] Roger Ebert said, in his review and synopsis in Chicago Sun-Times, "There is a strength in the simplicity of this story, in the almost fairy-tale quality of its images and the shocking suddenness of its violence, that Hollywood in its sophistication has lost.