This gritty film revolves around the protagonist Brother Black Dog and his friends. It is a touching story of pain interwoven with hope, brought to life by vividly real characters who engage the audience to feel the pain of a small village forced to endure great upheavals caused by globalization.

This is a story of Shetou Township in Taiwan, a small town at the foot of Mountain Pagua has been nearly forgotten during the trend of globalization. This is hosiery’s only industrial cluster in Taiwan. In the past making socks would allow a couple to raise their children, pay for their housing, and even upgrade themselves from employees to bosses, running their own small-sized business.

Due to the huge impact of globalization, these are now only dreams, hardly able to be realized. Half of the population lives under the shadow of an uncertain future. Our protagonist Brother Black Dog refuses to accept his fate and tries to fight his way out.

Most people in the town call him “Bother Black Dog”. His life and his career have taken a U-turn. He used to be an athlete when he was young. Unfortunately, a back injury forced him into a career in the sock industry. Working up from apprentice to boss, he dedicated himself to producing various sport socks in memory of his good old days.

He had been getting steady orders from a famous international sport company for the past few years. However, in March things took a turn for the worse again, when the overseas orders suddenly disappeared. He wears a deep frown because no orders have come through the fax machine in three months - he is beginning to think the machine is broken! Nearly 45 years-old having a happy family with his wife and three children, things look bleak up ahead, in both in his career and his increasingly painful back.

His considerate wife and children are his support of despairs. His wife tries to earn money by making sock mannequins. Meanwhile, he plans to go back to return to the field of sports, to sell his products with new hope. Positive feedback from his friends, who have tried samples, inspires him to feel optimistic. He starts a dream of creating functional socks to protect people’s feet.

Whenever he chats about sport with his son, he is upbeat even though there is no real reason to be happy. He coaches his son at volleyball and sends his new design of socks to all the team members.

He attentively watches the performance of his son’s volleyball team; especially once they begin wearing his new socks. In his life, this is also a brand new game for him. He wants to create his own brand to regain his strength from the sports field.

His friend A-Liang does another kind of work in this sock industry. He keeps on working for a marginal profit day by day. There are a dozen female laborers in his factory. Some of them have to support their whole family on their meager monthly salary of just over three hundred and fifty US dollars. Worried that the situation will deteriorate, A-Liang decides to develop a second skill. He remembers his divination skills, maybe working as a Feng shui master could be the answer. However, since he is hardly capable of finding his own destination, helping others may be out of the question.

The stories of Brother Black Dog and A-Liang are representative of thousands of hopeless contracting manufacturers suffering from severe competition within the global production chain.

After a “cold” summer and a bitter winter, will a spring of hope come for them at the end? This is a real story extolling the “never give up” spirit and the power of lives never to be besieged.