Her love is torn between a doctor and a poet, a man and a memory...

A young painter named Zhou Yu (Gong Li) falls headlong in love with a painfully shy poet, Chen Ching (Tony Leung). Twice a week she takes the train to his town to be with him, even though he's bewildered by her near-obsessive passion. On the train, a wise-cracking veterinarian (Sun Hong-Lei) pursues Zhou Yu, but she initially resists his emotional directness...