In 1950s, the super-skilled workers in the factory were praised as "great craftsmen". There are two "great craftsmen" with unique skills in a steel plant in Northeast China. Brother Xiao Changgong (Liu Peiqi) is honest, but he can't get sand in his eyes. My younger brother, Yang Laosan (Sun), is active and fearless. In order to build a new socialist China, burning forgings, sincere heart and brotherly struggle.

Although Xiao Changgong knows that his younger sister Xiao (Chen Xiaoyi) loves his teacher Yang Laosan and is pregnant with Yang Laosan's child, he thinks that Yang Laosan's style is frivolous, and even suspects that Yang Laosan touched his little ass in the dark, so he does not say anything about letting Xiao marry Yang Laosan. In this way, the two brothers struggled but sympathized with each other and helped each other through the fiery fifties, three years of hard natural disasters and the surging Cultural Revolution.

In those years, the Xiao family sent away the child's mother, sacrificed the eldest daughter-in-law, and the second son became mentally ill. However, Xiao Changgong still refused to let his sister marry his younger brother. After entering the reform and opening up, the next generation has grown up and has their own family. Together with the older generation, they are suffering the fate of being laid off.