A tragicomedy initially set in the jianghu-criminal underworld-setting, ASH IS PUREST WHITE is less a gangster movie than a melodrama. With a three-part structure, it begins by following the quick-witted Qiao (Tao Zhao) and her mobster boyfriend Bin (Fan Liao) as they stake out their turf against rivals and upstarts in 2001 postindustrial Datong before expanding out into an epic narrative of how abstract forces shape individual lives, and continues Jia Zhangke's body of work as a record of 21st-century China and its warp-speed transformations.

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The Great Patriotic War is going on. Junior Lieutenant Nikolay Ivushkin in a small truck, along with the driver Vasya, barely survived, break away from the German tank. Ivushkin arrives at the headquarters located in the village of Nefyodovka, where he is appointed commander of the only surviving tank. Soon the tanks of the German Hauptmann Klaus Jäger arrive at the site. In battle, Ivushkin destroys the entire tank company of Yager (in a number of cases, with one projectile, two tanks at a time). However, the T-34 has serious damage, and Klaus destroys it. Ivushkin and mechanic-driver Stepan Vasilyonok were wounded and captured.

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