Two very different young women attempt to cope with the cultural changes sweeping their hometown of Beijing, China in the late 1990s. Xiaoxia has just returned from prolonged study overseas. She is a musician, and is shocked to see how money-hungry everyone now seems to be. When she begins running her brother’s nightclub, she almost starts having a good (and successful) time, until the still-puritanical authorities close it down after she permits an avant-garde group to give a nude performance. Linlin never left town, but her studies at art school were cut short by official disapproval of her affair with a non-Chinese foreigner. A rich German arranges for her photography to be exhibited in Munich, and she is eager to leave the country to see the show. The two women’s lives briefly connect at the nightclub, but are otherwise separate.