There she meets a fellow student and begins an intense romantic relationship in the backdrop of the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and massacre.

The first begins in the late 1980s (subtitles inform the audience of the place and year at various points in the film), as Yu Hong enters the university.

Yu Hong and Zhou Wei embark upon a passionate but volatile love affair just as political forces are moving towards Tiananmen Square.

Two events then bring the first half of the film to a close: First, Zhou Wei, incensed at the jealousy and emotional instability of his girlfriend, begins to have an affair with Li Ti; and second, the crackdown occurs on the students on Tiananmen Square and on the campus of Beida.

The film then fast forwards several years, as Lou Ye intersperses the travels of his three main characters with news footage of the end of the Cold War, and the 1997 Hong Kong handover.

Yu Hong has left Tumen again, first for Shenzhen, and then for the central China city of Wuhan, while Li Ti and Ruo Gu have moved to Berlin.

Yu Hong is unable to forget Zhou Wei, and has empty affairs with a married man and a kind but quiet mailroom worker.

Though the three friends appear happy, when Zhou Wei decided to return to China, Li Ti suddenly commits suicide.

Lou Ye picked Hao Lei from over 400 candidates because she was the only one who turned him down, fearing the sex scenes would hurt her love relationship.

The entire crew waited patiently for Hao to accept, for so long that the original choice for Zhou Wei, Liu Ye, had to abandon the project.

Hong Kong feminist scholar Evelyn Wan argued that the “excessive sex scenes,” while disturbing, effectively convey the “sense of unsettledness and bewilderment” of the main characters.

[24][22] Besides the filmmakers, Summer Palace itself was de facto banned when SARFT refused to grant a certificate to distribute in the Mainland because the film was not up to the official standards for picture and sound quality.

[25] In Summer Palace, the director "masterfully converges sexual awakening and romantic confusion with political radicalization and frustrated aspirations".

Scholar Shen Qinan points out that student's sexual exploration in 1980s aligns with the rapid social developments in China during that period.

On the contrary, the repetitive sexual intercourses are shown as "a clumsy athletic exercise, a messy enervation of tumbling bodies".

[23] This character is meant to represent the generation of the Cultural Revolution, and her confrontation with Yu reveals the altering campus climate during the late 1980s that university is not only limited to study but also becomes a romantic space for young people.