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Director Jiang Qinmin's sweeping romantic drama Sky Lover opens amid a time of great tumult in Guangxi, rural China, with the Communists taking over the region. An older gentleman (Feng Enhe) - the father of Jia Kuan (Liu Ye)) - fiddles with a rifle and accidentally shoots himself blind, prompting a terrible misunderstanding: the local village boys mistakenly believe that a newcomer, Yu Chen (Dong Jie) has injured the poor fellow, and thus chase Yu Chen through the barley fields until she runs headfirst into Jia Kuan. Tragically, Yu is mute, so she cannot protest her innocence, but no matter - Jia instinctively senses her purity of heart and motive, and his father indeed corroborates Jia's intuition that Yu is innocent. In time, Yu shares a residence with Jia Kuan and his father, and (because of her muteness and the father's blindness) communicates by writing on the father's hand. She gradually reveals to them that she is an orphan, and arrived in the area amid a search for her long-estranged brother. Meanwhile, Jia begins to pine for Zhu Ling, a gorgeous prima donna from the village, who both fails to return his affections and engages in a rich love affair with the only educated young man in the community.