Yishui is a small town wrapped in a network of rivers. The wooden piles on the pier are covered with moss, the smoke is swirling in the teahouses, and the gongs and drums on the stage are ringing and silent. Lin Yuanzhi opened a photo studio in this city. People's faces were hung in the darkroom, including smiles at weddings, white faces at funerals, and negatives that could not be exposed to light. From the summer of 1931 to the autumn of 1949, the small town experienced flag changes, slogan renovations, gunfire and silence. Lin Yuanzhi was caught up in the waves: he frozen time for others and hid the testimony for himself; he was lured into fame and fortune, and his conscience held his ankle. Gu Meng who teaches, Luo Jian who works as an official, Qian Shuren who is good at calculating, Tang Yan who is an anxious student, and all the people in the market who are struggling to survive, each live in the cracks of the times. Light and shadow pierce the flesh, illuminating the selected texture. What is frozen in the film is not the face, but the struggle and self-evidence of the times. After ten years of wind and rain, all kinds of destinies intertwined on the long street of Yishui, and finally returned to a beam of light, leaving behind irretrievable images and other silent distortions.
