 This movie won the first Golden Rooster Awards for Best Picture in 1981, a prize it shared with Xie Jin's "Legend of Tianyun Mountain".During the time the "Gang of Four” is on the rampage in China, a poet named Qiu Shi who has been in prison for 6 years is secretly transferred from Sichuan to Wuhan by boat under the guard of Li Yan and Liu Wenying.They meet six passengers on the boat – a poor girl named Xing Hua who had to work as a prostitute to pay her debts, a just woman teacher, an old actor of Beijing Opera, a frail elderly woman who has just lost her son, a young worker who has a clear stand on what to love and what to hate, and a little girl in rags.