Pan tells the story of a woman he loved, Wu Aihua (Tao Yuling), whom he never returned to after his raft broke up and he fell into debt.
When Pan and Zhao find him, he has entered a labor camp and is nursing former district director Xu back to health.
We learn that each of these men knew Xu before the cultural revolution as a good man, who worked and had fun with the people he led.
Pan tells Zhao about seeing Wu Aihua after he did not return to her—he explains that she, too, knew District Director Xu and has a husband and child.
They purchase ginseng root at a high price to cure Xu, and learn that all shops will soon be closing because everyone must attend a patriotic opera.
They notice that the police have arrested Wu Aihua, claiming she must have stolen the ginseng because she could not have afforded it, and the current Director confiscates it.
The film itself is a criticism of the failure of the government to follow through on promises, and an existential meditation on what it means to live well in the absence of a guiding state.
He explains that while his film The King of Masks played for 11 weeks in the United States, the Chinese distributor decided that it would be released for only three days in theatres there.