Adapted from Love by West Lake, a novel series by Mao Dun Literature Prize winner Wang Xufeng, the film is set against Orioles Singing in the Willows, one of the Ten Scenes of West Lake. It tells of the emotional entanglement between two young women of a Yue opera troupe in the Jiangnan region and a painter in the 1990s. Chuitiao, a gifted performer of male roles, and Yinxin, who plays young female roles, have known each other since childhood and grew up together in the troupe. Their personalities could not be more different, but they are as close as sisters. Chuitiao lives with her whole heart, and lives for the stage; Yinxin seems simple and innocent but knows how to advance and when to retreat. Each is the most important person in the other's eyes, but life is unpredictable and differences pile up, above all when the Hangzhou painter Gong Yushan appears and turns the two girls who depended on each other into lovers and rivals. As times change and Yue opera declines from its peak, the fates of Chuitiao and Yinxin rise and fall with it. When the music ends and everyone has gone, the one person she cannot let go of is still her.