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This Chinese melodrama chronicles four decades in the life of a vintner's daughter. The story begins in Shaoxing during the 1920s. The winemaker and his wife are celebrating the birth of their daughter Huadiao. The jubilant father even christens that year's wine, Maiden Rose and stores away a special jar for his daughter's marriage. Twenty years pass and Huadiao is seen as a willful young woman used to getting her own way. She is a good student, but must forsake her education after a local boy impregnates her. A civil war erupts and her lover disappears. Twenty more years fly by. Mao is in charge of China and now Huadiao must cope with her grown daughter's disappointment at being thrown out of the university because the government has labeled her mother a neo-capitalist after she received a letter from her first lover, who lives in Taiwan. The daughter ends up marrying a humble laborer and bearing a daughter of her own. More time passes and the story picks up in the '90s as Chen Fei, the confident granddaughter of the now 70-year-old Huadiao, dreams of owning her own restaurant. Meanwhile, her grandmother finally gets to see her old lover who has left his wife and family in Taiwan to come to visit her.