The period of Japanese rule over the island of Taiwan is still a potent memory for its residents, as is evidenced by this drama. In the story, a couple of brothers (Peng Chia-chia and Huang Pin-yuan) are lured away from their everyday lives to work at a Japanese-run gold mine in the town of Chiu-fen. One of them falls in love with the housekeeper for the mine's brothel (Ch'en Hsien-mei), the other develops a cozy relationship with his landlady, an enterprising widow (Yang Kuei-mei). Conditions in the town and at the mine are difficult enough to begin with, as the Japanese are harsh overlords. When they start raiding the brothel to make body searches of mine workers in order to try to find smuggled gold, the indignity of this leads to several violent protests by the miners and an even harsher crackdown by the authorities. Aginst this background, the love story continues.