Yuangong, the deacon, opened the shrine and exposed the holy book to the human world. He also carved the contents of the book on the stone wall of white cloud cave in the mountains. He is now punished to guard the book for life by the jade emperor for breaking heaven's law and betraying the holy secret to human. In order to pass this holy book to human beings, he would have to get by the antagonist fox.

An unschooled young man, one of the countless victims of Mao's Cultural Revolution, is laboring in the countryside when he is assigned to teach in a nearby school. Gradually, he abandons the Maoist textbook and encourages the barely literate kids to write about their own lives and feelings.