Although billed as a gay-themed drama in some places, Mei-Li Zai Changge is more an examination of life, family ties, female bonding and the rapid changes occurring in Taiwanese society as presented via the stories of two very different young women who at first share only the same name, but then come together to share something far more intimate. Chen Mei-Li represents the middle class and lives with her unhappily-married long-suffering parents and her busy, materialistic siblings in an urban high-rise. Lin Mei-Li lives outside of the city in a ramshackle home with her working-class father and widowed grandmother, who when not ruling the roost, pines for the happy days when her husband was alive. Much of the film is spent drawing parallels between the young women's lives. After about an hour, the two meet when they get a job working in the box office of a local movie theater.