Liu Yifei plays Elso, a reputed French flutist who travels from Paris to Chengdu. Her life is compared to the one of a night peacock, an eternal conflict between life and death, love and time. A night peacock, by Fabre’s definition, is a moth with the life goal of finding their soul mate.

During the Cultural Revolution, two young men are sent to a remote mining village where they fall in love with the local tailor’s beautiful granddaughter and discover a suitcase full of forbidden Western novels.