Scenes 1 to 10

The movie starts with the image of the swinging three little Song sisters and the common saying about them: "One loved money [Ailing], one loved power [Meiling], one loved her country [Qingling]", thus introducing the general topic and the basic evaluation of the three. Then the story begins: The opening scene is set in winterly Beijing in 1981. A telegram is sent for the first time since 1949 from mainland China to the Chiang family [i.e. to Song Meiling in the US]. In her apartment in New York, Meiling receives the telegram: her sister Qingling is terminally ill. She muses about the situation that will leave her as the only surviving member of the Song family. Her servant suggest she should fly to Peking to see her dying sister, but the staff around her objects to her flying to the mainland. Meanwhile in Beijing, Qingling is desperately waiting. Her servant tells her about a plane from New York that is bound to arrive via Hong Kong [a realist but also symbolic comment on Hong Kong’s role as an intermediary], and Qingling hopes it will carry Meiling.

The viewer is now taken back in time to a spring [which, according to historical events referred to below, should be 1905], when two little girls, Qingling and Meiling, are playing at an echo wall, singing a nursery rhyme. They are picked up by their eldest sister Ailing. She takes them to their father Charlie who is dressed in a Reverend’s clothes. He is organizing patriotic protests against foreigners and a boycott of foreign goods[1], asking his daughters to burn their Western dolls. Meiling does not understand why and is going to cry, but after Charlie explained the reasons, Qingling helps her little sister and throws both of their dolls unto the pile. Ailing, being the last of them, throws her big doll in, thus seeming to obey, but secretly keeps a smaller one. [This scene already defines their respective characters].
In the next shot set at Charlie’s print shop, Sun Yat-sen is introduced who is on the run from the Qing government. Charlie prints bibles and other religious materials, but also Sun’s revolutionary pamphlets. Sun explains to the girls that he wants a new China, referring to his own example as a boy who never wore any shoes until 13 years of age. Now, China should become a country where everybody will wear shoes. [Shoes are a recurring theme in the whole movie]. When the authorities arrive in search of Sun, he has to flee immediately, loosing a shoe which Qingling courageously throws into the printing machine to stop the printing of the pamphlets. Now the three girls witness for the first time the cruelty of revolution and its enemies, since not only "uncle Sun" has to flee, but a suspect is even beheaded before their eyes by the authorities.

Charlie teaches his daughters English, citing Napoleon's well-known saying about China: "If China moves, it will move the world". [This, again, shows Charlie as being Western educated but still patriotic]. The three sisters are also learning to play Western musical instruments from their mother: Ailing the violin, Qingling and Meiling the piano. Charlie is very strict with them, but he also often plays and dances with his daughters. His unconventional treating of the girls sometimes exasperates their mother, but he tells them that he believes China’s sickness to be grounded in its poverty, and that he wants his daughters to do something important in their lives and become the "new women" of China. Therefore, he sends his daughters to America for education. In a very moving scene, he sees them off at the port, singing a song he used to sing with them as a farewell. Little Meiling, again, suffers the most, having to part with her parents, but Qingling takes her hand.

A crowd carries pictures of Sun Yat-sen; then the camera switches to a Western-style building, where Sun and Charlie Song are waving to the crowd. It is 1911, and "uncle Sun" – as the sisters used to call him – finally has overthrown the Qing dynasty. Later, at a bridge somewhere in Shanghai, Charlie helps cutting off Manchu "pigtails" and hands out soups as a recompense.

Ailing has great plans with her husband: she wants him to expand his pawn-shops to grow into a big banking business. The wedding is set in front of a Western mansion and is a big Western-style party. Friends of the family ask who would work for Sun Yat-sen as a secretary after Ailing, who had done the job, is now married. Charlie and his wife respond that they still have two daughters, so Qingling might replace her sister. A guest then toasts to the "Song dynasty" and its future. H. H. Kung meanwhile explains to other guests that he even imported a Western toilet for the couple's new mansion.

Qingling is riding in a riksha through Japanese paddy fields. She is sent by Charlie to replace Ailing as secretary to Sun. When she finds Sun in deep thoughts in a Buddhist temple and wants to go over, he mistakes her as a spy of Yuan Shikai [against whose dictatorship Sun had launched the "Second Revolution" which failed and drove him into Japanese exile] and throws a shoe at her. She carries the shoe over and tells him who she is. Sun first wants to turn her down, because his life in exile is very dangerous, but she convinces him to let her stay. Later she writes a letter to her younger sister Meiling, confessing that it is very exciting to work for Sun. In short scenes we experience the frustrations that Sun is going through. After the revolution [and after renouncing presidency], he wanted to build railroads in China but could not [because of his conflict with Yuan Shikai]. Western powers would not back him [they opted for Yuan Shikai]. On the other hand Russia offers help but his comrades are against his alignment with Russia [around 1914! – this passage smells of a deliberate distortion of history since the whole debate over "alignment with Russia" went on in the 1920s and referred to the Soviet Union, not tsarist Russia, of course]. Qingling understands him and confesses in a letter to Meiling that she fell in love with Sun.

Qingling returns to the home of her father, but she is not welcome because her father is upset about her marriage plans. In his eyes, her affection for the much older Sun is simply "hero worship". He orders her to stay home but she manages to escape. Her mother, who understands her, tries to stop her first but eventually lets her leave.

Sun and Qingling get married at a Japanese shrine. As the guests start to congratulate the newly wed couple, Charlie enters the scene. He calls desperately for the police, curses Sun and tells his daughter that she is no longer part of his family. (Meiling is fully supporting Qingling’s choice in deciding her marriage herself, though).

Charlie, his wife and his daughter Ailing with her husband are watching Chinese opera. On another balcony sits young Chiang Kai-shek, dressed in military clothes and accompanied by rather dubious figures. Meiling enters the hall in a modern Western-style outfit. Chiang notices her and asks about her, but the men at his side joke that he should not think of being up to the Songs, hinting also at his being already married. Chiang nevertheless proves self-confident and sends some chosen dishes over to the Songs to attract their attention. Shortly after, a subordinate of his comes in, telling him that something has happened. Immediately, Chiang walks over to the Songs and informs them that there is an uprising under way, endangering Sun and Qingling, and he promises that he will do his utmost to rescue them. Charlie is very disappointed that "a good show has been ruined" by such news. Now the uprising [1922 in Canton by the warlord Chen Jiongming] and Sun’s and Qingling's flight are intertwined with the Chinese opera. Sun and Qingling are fleeing between bullets and grenades.

Sun and Chiang are on the deck of a warship, waiting and looking for Qingling who had been lost in the turbulent flight. The ship is under continuous attack but does not retreat. Then the camera switches to Qingling who is still on the run. After a dramatic flight she finally makes it to the warship. When she embraces Sun, she tells him that during the whole upheaval she had miscarried their unborn son.

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