The film is over three hours long and consists of two parts, Eight War-Torn Years (八年離亂) and The Dawn (天亮前后), released one after the other the same year. It details the trials and tribulations of a family around the Second Sino-Japanese War, in pre-war, wartime and post-war China. The first part of the film, Eight War-Torn Years details the early life and marriage of a young working-class couple, Sufen (Bai Yang), and Zhang Zhongliang (Tao Jin) and the strain produced when the husband is forced to flee to Chungking while leaving his family in Shanghai during the war. The second part of the film details Zhang Zhongliang's return to Shanghai, now married into a wealthy bourgeois family for whom Sufen is forced to work as a maid.