In 1997, in a water town in southern China, widow Lin Chunyan struggles to raise her son alone while looking after her twelve-mu fishpond. Just as her fish begin fetching a good price, Yang Demao, owner of Yang's Fish Market, sets his sights on her large pond by the river. She refuses to sell, but overnight, all the fish in the pond turn belly-up. A Qiang bangs a basin and accuses her of using the wrong chemicals, while Yang Demao offers her three hundred yuan to buy the livelihood she has spent three years building. She neither argues nor cries. Instead, she discovers chemical residue in the sediment at the bottom of the pond, quietly finds a spring-fed pond, and carefully writes the truth about the chemicals used in the old pond into a written agreement. Convinced that he knows everything about fish and fishponds, Yang Demao insists on buying it at a high price. But when he puts the new fish fry into the water, they too turn belly-up. His own subordinates expose one another over the chemical bottle, leaving him with devastating losses. Meanwhile, Lin Chunyan takes fresh fish from the western pond to the market and sells them for a handsome price.