This period drama swept the Star Awards of 1997. Story goes that on 7 July 1937, the Marco Polo Bridge Incident sparks off the Second Sino-Japanese War as Japan launches a full invasion on China. Dida Cheng (James Lye), a deserter from the Chinese army, flees to Malaya, where he meets Cuicui (Lina Ng), a Chinese opera actress, and Hideko (Ivy Lee), a Japanese woman. The three of them are drawn into a complex love triangle. Xie Guomin (Christopher Lee), an anti-Japanese activist, and Zhou Wenlong (Ryan Choo), the asthmatic son of a tailor, both fall in love with the porridge vendor Wang Qiumei (Carole Lin). After Wang is publicly humiliated by an evil businessman, she is saved by Zhou and decides to marry him. However, she is already secretly pregnant with Xie's child. Their relationships become very strained. After the Japanese occupied Singapore in 1942, the Sook Ching Massacre takes place when thousands of Chinese deemed to be anti-Japanese activists are rounded up and executed. Following his arrest by the Kempeitai, Xie Guomin becomes a hanjian and informer after succumbing to the enemy under torture. On the other hand, Dida Cheng becomes a resistance fighter and an ally of Force 136, and he continues to fight the Japanese invaders to liberate Singapore. Historical figures such as the war heroes Lim Bo Seng (Rayson Tan), Elizabeth Choy (Rosalyn Chen) and Sybil Kathigasu (Jacintha Abisheganaden), the philanthropist Tan Kah Kee (Tan Soo Seng), as well as notorious Japanese military figures such as Ishibe Toshiro and Yoshimura Ekio, are also featured as semi-fictional characters in the drama.