Sixty-two-year-old Zhou Xiuqin lives alone in an old county employee residential compound. When her son runs into trouble renewing the lease on his bicycle repair shed, she keeps it from her daughter and instead takes the golden earrings she has worn for many years to be pawned, exchanging them for eight hundred yuan to help her son in an emergency. After finding the pawn ticket, the daughter feels misunderstood and believes that her younger brother always makes their mother bear the pressure. As the family talks things through, the mother insists that her money is hers to decide, while also demanding that her son take on his due responsibilities. In the end, the earrings return to her hands, and the family also understands that helping each other does not mean taking on everyone else's entire life.