In 1930's Shanghai, Wu Sunpu, chief executive of the Shanghai Yuhua Silk Company, faces many struggles: with plant workers, with strikers, others in his industry, and most of all with bourgeois comprador Zhao Botao. Capitalists and other figures in Shanghai's industrial and commercial community come and go. The strategy finally comes down between Wu and Zhao. Zhao plans to take over Wu Sunpu's plant with support from Americans. Wu faces a choice of surrender to Zhao or bankruptcy. He considers s...