"Shanghai, a fast-changing metropolis, a port city where people come and go.
Shanghai has hosted all kinds of people – revolutionaries, capitalists, politicians, soldiers, artists, and gangsters. Shanghai has also hosted revolutions, assassinations, love stories.
After the Chinese Communists' victory in 1949, thousands of Shanghaiers left for Hong Kong and Taiwan. To leave meant being separated from home for thirty years; to stay meant suffering through the Cultural Revolution and China's other political disasters."
Quoting the synopsis from the 2010 Cannes Film Festival site.