Old Shanghai: A Search for Family in Troubled Times

Twelve years spent searching for family, then one day the mystery breaks open and the truth comes to light. Guo Nian'an, a watchmaker separated from his parents as a child, has only one keepsake: a mysterious copper gear. As an adult, he follows the clues into danger, only to discover that his parents were anti-Japanese intelligence agents who had been undercover for years. Because they possessed vital intelligence about the Japanese army's arsenal, the Military Statistics Bureau had secretly kept them safe under the pretense of imprisonment for three years.

In a time of upheaval, political divisions, duty to country and family, and personal feelings all intertwine. The spirited and courageous Huang Li, daughter of a Military Statistics Bureau official, takes a bullet for Guo Nian'an. Her father, bureau chief Huang Zhiyuan, witnesses Japanese brutality and the traitors selling out their country, and finally sees the light. He abandons his former path and leads his subordinates to join the resistance. With the precision and lock-picking skills he honed as a watchmaker, Guo Nian'an joins his parents, Huang Li, and Qiu Ju, an underground Party operative, to decipher the copper gear's code and strike at the Japanese army's secret arsenal.

From a desperate rescue at Fuxing Flour Mill to a stealth raid beneath the Huangpu River, they stand side by side amid a hail of bullets. The perilous transmission of intelligence, the easing of old family grievances, and their willingness to risk their lives for one another all converge in a glimmer of hope amid the chaos, as the arsenal goes up in flames. When the smoke finally clears, they make a promise on a hill in their base area as they gaze toward Shanghai: once the war is won, they will open a quiet watch-repair shop, bringing peace to their country and keeping their bonds alive. This is a story of searching for family, awakening, resistance, and hope. In an age when the land lies shattered, the perseverance of ordinary people lights the way to national salvation.