The film tells the story of three women in wartime Shanghai under Japanese occupation: an uneducated factory worker, an intellectual resistance activist, and a bourgeois new woman.

Jinmei (Shangguan Yunzhu), a textile worker, is raped by two drunken Japanese soldiers on her way home from work.

Xinqun (Huang Zongying) and her boyfriend Mengnan (Zhou Feng), who are members of underground resistance, come to her aid and bring her to the home of their friend Ruoying (Sha Li).

Ruoying's husband Yuliang (Zhao Dan) had left Shanghai when war broke out in 1937 to join the anti-Japanese resistance, leaving behind his wife and baby daughter Beibei.

After years passed without hearing from her husband, Ruoying has married the prosperous banker Zhongyuan (Lan Ma [zh]), assuming Yuliang has died.

Neighbourhood hooligans taunt Jinmei and her husband, who gets in a fight with them and loses his eyesight when they pour chemicals on his face.

Xinqun finds Zhongyuan and asks him to prove his patriotism and use his Japanese connection to secure the release of Yuliang and Ruoying.

In a twist, on the opening day of the publishing house, Yuliang throws a bomb into its window, injuring Zhongyuan.

Xinqun finds Ruoying and Jinmei and brings them to her girls' school, where she tells her students about the story of the two women.

[4] Jinmei (金妹), the textile worker, is played by Shangguan Yunzhu, a highly talented actress.

[4]: 349 Xinqun (新群, meaning "new masses"), played by Huang Zongying, is a schoolteacher active in underground resistance.

Tian Han revealed years later that she was modeled on the real life of the underground communist activist Mao Liying.

Although a Marxist himself, Tian Han's portrayal of the main working-class man in the film is remarkably negative.

[4]: 351 Zhang Yuliang (章玉良), Ruoying's first husband, is played by the famous actor Zhao Dan.

[4]: 356 The film was shot in 1948 and released in January 1949 in Shanghai, on the eve of the Communist victory in the Chinese Civil War.

[4]: 348 After the Communist victory, the kind of multifaceted and humanistic treatment of Japanese-occupied China exhibited in the film became politically unacceptable.