Taipei, the present day, 24 March. An employee at the Taipei Department of Civil Affairs, Chen Yu-cheng, 28, is reprimanded by his boss, Hsu Tzu-chiang for his sloppy work on writing a Taiwan-China Cross-Cultural Etiquette Manual without knowing anyone from the Mainland or ever having been to China. Yu-cheng is given a week to revise what is already his 10th draft. That evening, while having dinner at a dumplings street-stall, he gets talking to a young woman from Beijing, Qin Lang, when he intervenes in an argument she's having with the stall-owner. Qin Lang, 25, has just arrived from Beijing on a mission to track down Chen Guang, the childhood first love of her 79-year-old grandmother, Li Huan, with whom she is very close: Li Huan and Chen Guang last saw each other in Mianyang, Sichuan province, in 1948, before they were separated by the civil war and Chen Guang moved to Taiwan. Yu-cheng proposes a deal to Qin Lang: he will help her find Chen Guang if she helps him rewrite his manual. Qin Lang, who has no address or phone number for Chen Guang, grudgingly agrees and ends up staying at Yu-cheng's flat. At the Veterans' Association, Yu-cheng manages to get a list of potential candidates, which they then narrow down to six names. As they travel around Taiwan together, meeting people on the list, the bossy Qin Lang gradually warms to the boyish Yu-cheng, and both open up to each other.
