During the Guangxu period of the late Qing Dynasty, Runzhou in the south of the Yangtze River suffered from successive famines, epidemics spread, and exorbitant taxes and official corruption made the people at the bottom breathless. Tang Shouyi, a down-and-out scholar, and his family of four live in an old house on a half-acre pond. Their father is sick and they have children to feed. The eldest son Tang Chengzong is upright and diligent but is often bullied. The second daughter Tang Wanqing is gentle and cowardly but cannot escape the clutches of the devil. From their fields being flooded and their livelihood cut off, to selling all their family property and suffering humiliation in order to survive, to being forced by the wealthy Mr. Zhang, and their relatives suffering one after another, the Tang family struggled in the quagmire of the times and the darkness of human nature. There is no redemption, no turning point, just layers of suffering and despair. In the end, parents and children either freeze to death, die tragically, or are martyred. The family of four is completely destroyed, leaving only Hantang sobbing, witnessing a tragedy of the bottom class crushed by the times and power.
