In 1986, at the state-owned Hongxing Machinery Factory, Zhou Ran, a canteen cook, notices that a female worker named Gu Xiaowen buys only two jiao worth of vegetable dishes every day and is painfully thin. Feeling sorry for her, he secretly adds meat to her meals by pretending his hand is shaking while serving food. This earns him the resentment of his colleague Qian Desheng, who spreads rumors and frames him, resulting in Zhou Ran being suspended and assigned to wash vegetables. The rumors eventually drive Gu Xiaowen to leave the factory and return to her hometown. It is only when the factory director summons him that Zhou Ran discovers she is actually the director's daughter, sent to investigate working conditions at the grassroots level. Armed with evidence of corruption, he fights back, exposes the parasites in the canteen, and uses his sincerity to promote reforms in the factory's support services, allowing kindness to bear fruit in the factory community of the 1980s.