In the winter of 1948, the Kuomintang is losing the Huai Hai Campaign against the Chinese Communist Party during the Civil War. Kuomintang government officials started persecuting the people more severely to maintain their luxurious lifestyles. At a Shanghai shikumen house, Mr. Hou, a former Japanese collaborator, now a Section chief at the Kuomintang Ministry of Defense, is planning to sell the house he seized from its owner, Kong Yuwen, and fly to Taiwan. He appoints his mistress, Yu Xiaoying or so-called Mrs. Hou, to give an ultimatum to the rest of the tenants to move out. The house is tenanted by three families: Mr. Kong, a proofreader in a newspaper agency, whose son joined the New Fourth Army; Mr. and Mrs. Xiao, foreign goods vendors with their three kids; and a schoolteacher, Mr. Hua, his wife and their daughter, Wei Wei. When Mr. Xiao proposes they should band together, the others disagree and want to find alternative solutions. Mr. Kong and Mr. Hua try to find a place to stay at their workplaces respectively, while Mr. and Mrs. Xiao hope to invest in black market gold in order to buy the apartment building from Mr. Hou. However, things don't go as expected.

DVD-R is in Chinese with hard-encoded English subtitles. Approx. 106 mins. See film sample for audio and video quality!