On his way to a congress of kung fu masters, an initiate falls from a high cliff, only to be rescued by lovely Tien Lam (Anita Mui), who rides a huge (and sorry-looking) crane. The rest of the movie features a battle between warring martial arts factions, an equally fierce rivalry between the two daughters of the Crane Master, the accidental empowerment of an unprincipled master after having eaten half of a secret scroll, a battle with an immense tortoise whose spleeny vapors save a group of poisoned swordsmen, lots of great aerial fights against nearly invincible villains, and the usual blood spurting from assorted mouths.

In Spring in a Small City , Zhou Yuwen (Wei Wei) is the married female protagonist who has been nursing a sick husband, Dai Liyan (Shi Yu), for most of their marriage. One day, Dai's best friend, Zhang Zhichen (Li Wei) turns up in their dilapidated mansion, bombed during the war. Coincidentally, Zhichen happens to be Yuwen's former lover. During Zhichen's stay, Yuwen attempts to rekindle their affair. An extraordinary seduction scene takes place in which Yuwen wavers between libertarian abandonment and conscientious adherence to her personal obligations to custom and duty. As she seduces Zhichen, Yuwen intermittently covers her face with a silk scarf?an action that reveals her moral dilemma: should she leave her husband or see through her duties as a wife? The silk scarf seems to imply a tone of light-hearted coquetry but is in fact, a fitting symbol for the psychological fragility of Yuwen and the delicate caution with which she approaches her dilemma.