 As the Japanese begin bombing Shanghai, Sufen, her mother-in-law, and the baby travel to the countryside to live in the family farm with Zhongliang's father and younger brother Zhongmin.This brother, Zhongmin, is a village schoolteacher by day and a fighter in the guerrilla resistance by night.Hearing that the Japanese are arresting the literate intelligentsia ("because they know right from wrong"), Zhongmin and three of his friends escape into the mountains.