Wu Zuojia, a college graduate from a teachers’ college, faces the two major challenges of young adulthood: finding a job after becoming unemployed and settling down through marriage. He fails again and again, but refuses to lose heart, picking himself up after every setback. In the end, the woman he has a one-sided crush on marries someone else, while he faces the awkward question of how to divorce the city woman he has already married. He also gets a job that doesn’t suit him, but has no choice but to show up for work.
