SUMMARY: A young woman is married off to a much older man, the cruel and sadistic owner of a dye mill, and begins an affair with his adopted nephew that eventually destroys the entire family.

SCENE-BY-SCENE: On-screen text identifies the setting as a small town somewhere in China in the 1920s. The first scene opens with a man leading heavily laden horse through the streets of town to the Yang family's dye mill. It is late afternoon. Inside, an older man (Yang) sits at a table, looking over stacks of documents. Tall red candles are burning in a shrine behind him, decorated with calligraphic banners.

The man with horse (Tianqing) addresses Yang as "Uncle." The latter asks him what took so long; Tianqing says there were bandits. Yang asks why Tianqing is not dead; Tianqing does not reply, but hands Yang a purse.

Yang calls out to a "boy," who comes inside, greeting Tianqing. Yang pays this new person, and tells him not to bother coming back the next day. He then tells Tianqing to be at work early the next day

Tianqing goes to a room where the younger man, who was just fired, is getting dressed. The latter comments on the unfairness of his treatment; then tells Tianqing that his Uncle has "bought himself another wife." Tianqing comments that he saw wedding decorations. The younger man tells Tianqing that the new wife's name is Ju Dou; he also says that Yang tortured his last two wives to death because they did not give him sons. Tells Tianqing: "Listen to how your new aunt screams at night."

That night, Tianqing, in bed, hears Yang and Ju Dou fighting; Yang tells her she is good for nothing, and will never make an heir for the Yang family, while she begs to be allowed to rest.

In the early morning, Tianqing is beginning work; he hears Ju Dou crying in the washroom; he tries to sneak a look at her through a hole in the wall.

Later, Tianqing is at work in the dye mill, a large, open-roofed room full of steaming vats; there are lots of big levers and presses and pulleys, all operated manually by him or by a donkey. Yang tells Tianqing to go and call his aunt (Ju Dou). He goes upstairs to get her; is clearly struck by her beauty, seeing her face for the first time. Yang berates her for coming down so late, saying he "didn't buy a freeloader."

A man comes in with a large bundle of cloth on his back, saying that a Master Liu wants it dyed right away. As they weigh the cloth, he suggests to Uncle that he hire someone to help him at the mill, as it seems they have plenty of orders. Yang rejects the idea as too expensive— as well as the idea of letting Tianqing marry, though he is in his forties. When the man suggests that Tianqing is like a son to Yang, latter calls this "bullshit," saying that Tianqing "doesn't have my blood." He adopted Tianqing as an orphan when his parents died. Ju Dou overhears at least some of this conversation.

Ju Dou drapes the dyed cloth over high beams to dry. (These hanging lengths of cloth— which protrude through the open roof of the mill and catch the sun, turning it colors— will be an image that repeats throughout the film). Tianqing is watching her; she catches him at it, and as a result he loses control of one of the machines he is working with.

Tianqing goes underground into a cellar where the pigments are kept in ceramic pots. He pours red pigment into one of the dye vats as his uncle warns him not to waste any.

In Yang's room that night, Ju Dou is tied up and gagged, while Yang sits on a stool he has placed over her, trapping her beneath it. He tells her she must obey him, that when he buys an animal he expects obedience and that she is no better than an animal. She struggles, almost making him spill his tea, which he then dumps out on her bare skin, scalding her. Outside, Tianqing can hear her muffled screaming.

The next day, Tianqing again waits to spy on Ju Dou as she bathes; as she comes out of her room; she is staggering, barely able to walk. She comes around the corner into the stable area, and Tianqin quickly places straw over the holes through which he was looking, so she finds him sitting on the ground against the wall. They face each other for a moment, not speaking, with some awkward laughter; then Yang calls Tianqing, and he leaves. Ju Dou then goes to where Tianqing was sitting and finds the holes; she grabs at her shirt, obviously feeling violated. She stuffs straw into the holes.

In the mill, Tianqing prepares for another delivery trip; his Uncle tells him to negotiate the highest price, stay in cheap inns, etc. Tianqing goes into the stables to prepare the horse; Ju Dou is still there, in the straw, looking embarrassed.

The next scene begins in town, scenes of children playing and singing; a man carries red lanterns through the street.

Ju Dou, wearing a wide-brimmed straw hat and carrying decorations, runs into Tianqing as he returns from his trip. They both looked pleased to see one another. Her face is bruised; when Tianqing asks what has happened, she says she fell down. They hear squealing in the distance; Ju Dou says that Yang is killing the pig as an offering for the Moon Festival. Tianqing takes some of her packages, and notices that she has also hurt her arm; she also attributes this to her fall. Tianqing holds back, watching her walk on ahead.

That night, Ju Dou can be heard screaming even more loudly; Tianqing approaches the steps to their room, carrying a blade; he sinks it into the stair rail in frustration; Yang hears this and calls down. Tianqing asks if his aunt is okay, and if he should go get a healer; Yang says that she is only suffering from indigestion, and is already feeling better.The scene ends with a shot of the shrine, surrounded by festival lanterns, candles burning.

The next day, Ju Dou again staggers downstairs, visibly in bad shape. Tianqin again goes to watch her bathe through the hole in the wall. She starts to cover the hole with straw again, but then changes her mind; instead, she goes deliberately to the basin, makes splashing houses so Tianqing will know she is there, and removes her shirt when she hears him. Her body is covered with welts and bruises. She turns to let him see her from the front, crying as she does so.

Later, Tianqing and Ju Dou work in the mill, wringing out and hanging long bolts of dyed cloth, this time in reds and blues. She comes over to him, taking hold of the bolt he is working with; she is crying. She tells him that Yang will eventually kill her, and that she cannot go on in this situation. She tells him to let Yang kill her, because she no longer wants to live. Tianqing acknowledges that his uncle "has a bad temper"; Ju Dou retorts that he is "not human." She tells him that Yang is impotent, and that all he does is torture her. She weeps helplessly. Tianqing turns and continues hanging the cloth.

In the next scene, the horse is sick, laying on its side on the ground. Yang asks Tianqing if he fed the horse on his trip; he then suggests that the horse may have colic. Yang leaves instruction for filling outstanding orders with Tianqing, then runs out to find a doctor for the horse.

Later, Ju Dou comes into the room where Tianqing is eating; she appears ahppier than we have seen her thus far. She tells him that Yang will not be back tonight. Tianqing asks her to wake him early. She goes upstairs, dropping hints as she does so, but Tianqing does not follow her. Later that night, Ju Dou walks through the dye room to Tianqing's door; she pushes on it but finds it locked.

The next day, they are both eating near the dyeing presses; she asks him if he latched his door because he is afraid. She comes over to him, and begins touching him; she reveals that she knew about him watching her bathe; he is afraid, but she presses on. Finally he turns and pushes her down onto the platform of one of the machines; she accidentally kicks away a brace, allowing a bolt of cloth to drop back into the red dye. It scrolls past her head, sometimes covering part of her face as they are having sex. The cloth sinks into the dye, and the camera pans slowly up toward the shafts of sun passing through bolts of gold and yellow cloth hanging from the rafters.

Much later, a doctor attends to Ju Dou; he tells her and Yang that she is pregnant. Yang immediately runs to his shrine, asking his ancestors to grant him a son. He seems oblivious to the fact that he cannot be the father. As Yang shows the doctor out, Tianqing whispers to Ju Dou through the wall at the head of her bed; she tells him she is pregnant, and that the baby is his.

Later, a baby squalls; the midwife calls down that the baby is a boy, and Yang happily runs up the stairs to see him. Tianqing hides a smile of his own.

In the next scene, a group of men—members of the Yang family— gather around the table in front of the shrine, going through a book of names; they express concern that there are few good options left for a child of this generation. Tianqing looks on from a distance. The old man at the head of the table circles a character in the book; the child's name will be Tianbai. Someone else notes that Qing and Bai mean "purity," meaning that Tianqing's and the baby's names combine well. Tianqing looks pleased at this.

Later, Tianqing makes a toy for Tianbai; Ju Dou is sitting on her bed, nursing the baby. Yang leaves with the horse, telling Tianqing to work quietly so as not to disturb them. As soon as Yang is gone, Tianqing steals into the bedroom; Ju Dou pretends to be asleep, but grabs him as he leans over her. They kiss and then look at the baby. Ju Dou says her breasts are tender and swollen from milk; she offers Tianqing some and he takes it.

Later, they are lying in bed together when they hear (they think) Yang returning home. They dress quickly, but downstairs there is only the horse, standing at the door to the mill. Tianqing goes out looking for his Uncle, whom he finds unconscious by the road. He carries Yang home on his back. The doctor comes; he says that Yang will live, but is paralyzed from the waist down.

Yang wakes in the night to find Ju Dou is out of bed; he crawls onto the floor, and when she returns from Tianqing's room he trips her and tries to beat her. She pulls away and tells him that he can no longer control her, and that he is not Tianbai's father.

Much later, (a few months?) Tianqing and Ju Dou are working in the mill; Tianbai is wrapped in a puffy jacket and sitting in a barrel. She asks Tianqing why the baby never laughs, but Tianqing says he soon will. He sings to the baby, and she joins in Happy domestic scene. From his bed, Yang hears them singing.

At night, while Ju Dou is again in Tianqing's room, Yang crawls out of bed, trying (apparently to hurt the Tianbai; Tianqing and Ju Dou come in and stop him, and Ju Dou tells Tianqing to kill Yang; he does not, but does threaten to do so if Yang tries to hurt either her or the baby again.

Another night, Yang again struggles out of bed and down the stairs. He jams a spike in the bolt of the door to keep Tianqing out, and then pulls down several of the bolts of cloth hanging in the mill and sets them on fire, trapping Ju Dou and Tianbai upstairs. With buckets, Tianqing and Ju Dou are able to put the fire out. They tell Yang that they will not kill him, but keep him alive so that he can see them living together happily.

Tianqing rigs up a bucket with wheels to push Yang around in, and a pulley system to move him up and down stairs. They take him to bathe in the river, and neighbors comment on how lucky he is to have such a dutiful family to care for him. We see them feeding him; he spits the food back and Ju Dou. At one point, Tianqing lifts Yang up in the bucket and leaves him hanging by a rope while he and Ju Dou go out. From his perch, Yang looks at his shrine and asks his ancestors to help him out of his predicament.

Much later, Ju Dou, Tianqing, and Tianbai are out in a field of yellow and orange scrub. Tianbai is about two years old, and walking. The adults are folding cloth. Ju Dou says she is worried because Tianbai is not yet talking. Tianqing asks Tiabai to call him "daddy," which brings up the question of whether and when he should know who his father is. They agree to tell him when he is older. They then sneak off to have sex.

While they are gone, Tianbai runs back to the dye mill, where Yang is sitting in his bucket, dozing. Seeing Tianbai playing near one of the dye vats, Yang begins poling himself toward Tianbai using two sticks.

Back at the field, Ju Dou tells Tianqing her period is late— a problem since they could not convince people that Yang is the father this time. They then discover that Tianbai is gone.

Back at the mill, Yang draws closer in his bucket. Just as he is about to push Tianbai into a vat with one of his sticks, the boy gets up and moves to a different vat. (Meanwhile his parents run through the area, screaming his name). Tianbai sees Yang coming; he stands up and calls Yang "Daddy." Yang seems to decide that he really is the child's father; he begins to cry and hugs Tianbai. Tianqing and Ju Dou return to home find Tianbai pulling Yang toward them. They hear him call Yang "Daddy," and Yang teaches him to call Ju Dou "Mama" and Tianqing "Older Brother." Yang is the picture of glee.

Ju Dou and Tianqing are laying together against a wall outside the mill; the light is low and golden. She tells him not to take it so hard, that Tianbai does not understand and that they will explain things to him when he is older. She also says that her period has come, so she is not pregnant, but that they must be more careful in the future.

Ju Dou goes and buys some kind of contraceptive, a dark red powder, from an "old nun." She is clearly in pain, writhing on the floor, after using it the first time. She returns from Tianqing's room, looking worn out, to find Tianbai waiting at the top of the stairs, staring down at her.

The Yang family holds a birthday party for Tianbai. He is three. There are lots of people there, drinking, toasting Tianbai and Yang. Tanqing is asked to toast Tianbai as well; it clearly pains him to call Tianbai his "brother." The people there think he is crying because he is drunk; they tease him, saying his uncle needs to buy him a pretty wife of his own. Ju Dou quietly heads upstairs.

At night, Tainqing and Ju Dou in Tianqing's room; he tastes the "contraceptive" and finds that it is chili powder. He brings her a jug of vinegar, saying that old people use it as a contraceptive. She tries this and it also causes her tremendous pain. She suggests that they take Tianbai and leave, or live together and ignore public opinion. He tells her that if people knew about their affair, they would kill the two of them. Ju Dou then reveals that she has a bottle of arsenic, and says that "it's either him or me," But Tianqing does not want to kill Yang, saying "he is my uncle. Ju Dou is angrily, shouting at him, when they hear a banging from outside. Ju Dou comes out to find Tianbai throwing rocks at the door of Tianqing's room. She slaps him, but immediately regrets it, hugging him. As she does, we hear singing; the camera pans across the compound and up the stairs, where Yang is sitting in his bucket, singing a children's song.

Later, Ju Dou is hanging bolts of cloth in the mill when she collapses. They go to the doctor, who tells Tianqing that "your aunts lower parts are in bad shape." He prescribes some medicine, but tells Tianqing that she will no longer be able to get pregnant.

Walking home, Ju Dou is weak, and has difficulty walking; she and Tianqing separate on the outskirts of town, Tianqing telling her he will come home separately after dark; as she walks away, he calls out to her not to "do anything silly" (referring to the bottle of arsenic).

Meanwhile, back at the mill, Tianbai is pulling Yang along in his bucket by a rope tied around his waste. They go to the dye vats to dye some pieces of straw; Tianbai jumps up too quickly and pulls Yang into the vat. Unable to swim, he drowns; Tianbai watches, laughing, not understanding. Ju Dou comes home to find Yang floating facedown in the vat.

When Tianqing arrives home later that night, many people are in the complex; he comes into the main room where Ju Dou is keeping vigil next to Yang's body. Tianqing believes that Ju Dou has killed Yang; they argue about what sort of duty they owe to Yang, and what they can do now. He slaps her, and she compares him to Yang, who also beat her.

The Yang family elder who chose Tianbai's name comes and rules that Tianbai is the only heir, because Tianqing "is not really part of the family." He also says the funeral will take pace the next day. During the funeral, Tianqing and Ju Dou must follow tradition by trying to block the progress of the coffin as it is carried to the grave as a way of demonstrating their loyalty to Yang. The elder says there is "gossip about them in the village," so tomorrow is there chance to show the whole Yang clan their loyalty. Finally, he declares that Ju Dou cannot remarry; after the ceremony Tianqing must move out of the dye mill and live with someone named Wang, to avoid the possibility of gossip that would tarnish the Yang family name.

The following day, the funeral takes place as planned. In the procession, Tianbai rides atop the coffin, while others walk alongside, playing instruments and carrying white banners covered in writing; most of the members of the procession wear white. They throw rings of paper.

Ju Dou and Tianqing wait ahead, wearing white, including white head wrappings; according to the elder, they must try to block the procession 49 times. At the appointed time, they run to the coffin, screaming "don't leave!" and trying physically to hold it back. Each time, they fall to the ground, are lifted out of the way by the other members of the procession. It is visibly exhausting. Initially, we hear the music of the procession as well as the cries of Tianqing and Ju Dou, but as the scene goes on the soundtrack gradually fades out, and is replaced by the sound of an unaccompanied flute. Ju Dou and Tianqing continue to make their attempted interceptions in silence. Eventually, the procession moves on; the two are left on the ground, exhausted, in a pile of the paper rings. They both begin to cry.

The next scene begins as Tianqing appraoches and knocks on the door of the compound. A much older Tianbai answers. Tianqing greets Ju Dou as "Aunt," and the two of them eat together. Tianbai (who does not ever speak, after the scene in which he learns to call Yang "daddy") runs off, and the couple sneak away; Tianqing gives Ju Dou a new head scarf, and a new brush for Tianbai; he asks her to give it to him, as Tianbai will not talk to him. Tianbai finds them together, and glares angrily at them; later, when Tianqing leaves, Tianbai slams and locks the door behind him.

That night, Ju Dou sits alone in the old bedroom, staring into space.

On another day, Ju Dou and Tianqing sneak off for a tryst beneath an old bridge. They discuss their situation; Ju Dou notes that it has been 7 or 8 years since Tianqing moved out, and that they have lived in fear of gossip for all that time. She again suggests moving away; Tianqing notes that Tianbai is almost old enough to inherit the mill. They debate whether to tell him the truth about his parentage.

In town, a group of men stand around gossiping. One tells the others about how he chanced to see two people having sex outside; the one on top was "Tianbai's mother," who was "moving like when they scrub clothes." They all laugh, and then look up to see Tianbai watching them, holding an axe; he runs after the storyteller, chasing him through the streets; he manages to escape.

Tianbai comes back to the mill, where Tanqing is working; the latter asks what has happened, and tries to suck out a cut on Tianbai's hand (from the axe). Tianbai throws him down and kicks him. Then he goes upstairs and stars smashing things. Ju Dou, enraged at her son's behavior, screams out to Tianbai that Tianqing is his father. Tianqing is distraught about this. Tainbai throws Tianqing out of the compound.

Cut to a long shot of the roofs of the town, with the hanging bolts of cloth visible through the roof of the mill; then Ju Dou again sitting in the bedroom, looking worried.

The next scene opens with bolts of cloth, now yellow and orange, hanging all around. Ju Dou brings lunch to Tianqing, and tells him that Tianbai has gone out. Tianqing says that life will now be even harder for them. He then says that, though he is getting older, he would like to sleep with her; she agrees, and they decide to go down into the cellar where the pigments are kept. They pull the door shut behind them, and the screen goes dark. The flute score plays. The camera returns again to the main floor of the mill and the hanging bolts, sun spilling through and between them.

We see, from inside the cellar, the thin halo of light around the round door; Ju Dou's voice notes that it is stifling in the cellar, that the air is getting thinner; she suggests that they will suffocate if they stay down there. They debate leaving, but Tianqing says "lets lie like this for ever and ever." They reminisce about their first meeting, how he watched her through the hole in the stable wall.

Tianbai comes home, storming and stomping. He opens the cellar door and looks down, seeing them lying there, unconscious but still alive. He drags his mother out, none too gently, and carries her to her bedroom on his back. He dumps her on the bed, where she deliriously calls out to Tianqing.

Tianbai goes down into the cellar again and carries Tianqing out, then dumps him one of the dye vats. He wakes up, thrashes about, then grabs onto a beam and begins to pull himself out. Tianbai grabs a hunk of wood; Ju Dou comes out of the bedroom, crawling, sees what is happening and screams to Tianbai to stop; he doesn't. He hits Tianqing on the head, and Tianqing falls unconscious into the dye vat. As he goes down, he pulls a bolt of cloth from the rollers above, and it spools out into a pile that floats, breifly, on the surface of the water, as it did when Tianqing and Ju Dou had sex for the first time. The scene ends on a shot of the empty spool.

This is followed by a twilight shot of the hanging bolts of cloth, now burning. Ju Dou stands with a burning stick in her hand. The flames build around her, and she appears to be in flames herself as she looks around at the fire. The flames follow the bolts of cloth up to the roof; the image freezes on a still of the burning cloth and rafters, as the sound of crackling fire continues. This fades into the sound of children singing in unison. Credits. The children's song gives way to the flute music. The credits finish against a black screen.