Chen came from a family of herbal doctors, who have treated numerous orthopaedics dseases, severe and minor. Chen's house, hardly a big one, have accommodated patients from different ethnic groups and from different villiages near and far. The patients found themselves recovering sooner under the care of Chen than that of doctors from large hospitals, and the charges for their treatment were rather small. Year after year, Dr. Chen dedicated himself to this charitable work... This movie attempts to show the medical conditions in remote rural areas in China as objectively as it can. Dr. Chen, as a thread, links togther the real lives of the locals presented by a group portrait of them. Also, It reveals that the traditional doctor-patient relationship has survived the aggressive modern civilization in this area, so has the culture of helpfulness common to an "aquaintance society".
