Ten year-old Xiang faces a lonely future after his father dies. Just when he thinks he's going to spend his life in the orphanage, his estranged mother shows up. And his life changes forever... A loveless mother, a hateful stepfather, a chilly home. Where's Xiang heading to? He finds comfort in drawing and his work reveals his longing for care and affection. Life is full of hope again when he meets the old school janitor who doesn't show his kindness easily and a portly man who has crazy ideas and is haunted with nightmares of his brother. A scary truth is about to be unmasked. Will Xiang be able to depict his own image in the fourth portrait?

The film focuses on three city folks who unknowingly share the same apartment: Mei, a real estate agent who uses it for her sexual affairs; Ah-jung, her current lover; and Hsiao-ang, who's stolen the key and uses the apartment as a retreat.

China in the 1920's. After her father's death, nineteen year old Songlian is forced to marry Chen Zuoqian, the lord of a powerful family. Fifty year old Chen has already three wives, each of them living in separate houses within the great castle. The competition between the wives is tough, as their master's attention carries power, status and privilege. Each night Chen must decide with which wife to spend the night and a red lantern is lit in front of the house of his choice. And each wife schemes and plots to make sure it's hers. However, things get out of hand...

What you are willing to give up for exchange to fulfill your dreams?

Laichun, her father and two mothers, uncle and grandfather are of different generations; thus they all think differently. Father is the family head, and because he believes he must continue on the family name ends up taking two wives. His first wife also feels the same way, and so allows the second wife. Laichun feels the abyss between her and her parents and ends up getting pregnant, but hits a wall when her boyfriend does not take any responsibility. When her father is hospitalized, she begins to understand her father and two mothers. She is finally growing up.

Yang Ruyi (32), a fashion magazine photographer, lives with her elder sister Yang Ruxing (33), a rational, introverted detective fiction author. Ruyi has inadvertently photographed a couple making madly passionately love. Few days later in a shopping center not far from her home, she finds the woman already married, leading a child and is with a different man. Ruyi shares her secret with Ruxing who is suffering from writer's block. The two sisters begin to observe the couple; gradually Ruxing even writes some of her observations into her novel, without letting Ruyi knows it. Late one night, Ruyi views two people are arguing, but as she picks up her camera to photograph she can only see two vague, dark outlines wrestling one another; Ruyi calls the police but upon arriving, nothing seems out of order. Ruyi is convinced she has mistaken nothing; she enlarges the photo and discovers a third outline looks pretty much like her older sister...

A visual love poem of magical realism.