This is story of events that took place in the past……72 people are crowded in a tenement slum. The land-lady. Pa Ku (Hu Chin), a glamorous sexy woman lives with loafer, Tai Tzu-ping (Tien Ching) and their a nice, kindhearted girl, and is popular with all the tenants.Laundrywoman, Shanghai Po (Lydia Shum),gains the full support of the tenants when she protests against Pa Ku’s decision to restrict their water supply to two tubs each per day. Earlier, the laundrywoman’s husband, Shanghai Lao(Cheng Kang-yeh) had burned a hole in a pair of pants he was ironing. At first, Pa Ku is happy because she thinks the pants belong to the doctor (Ching Miao) but later she discovers that they are Tai Tzu-ping’s .Tai Tzu-ping is infuriated and demands compensation from Shanghai Lao, while Pa Ku gives vent to her anger by beating A Hsiang. Fortunately for A Hsiang, the cobbler, Fa Tsai (Yueh Hua) rushes to her rescue. In the confusion that ensues, Pa Ku snatches a piece of cloth from Chu, the tailor, and stuffs it in Tai Tzu-ping’s pocket. This is noticed by Pai Lan-fu (Ho Shou-hsin) who puts Pa Ku to shame by taking her task for her dishonesty.Tai Tzu-ping hates Fa Tsai and Pai Lan-fu, and so he incites policeman No.369 (Liu Yi-fan) to harass them. No.369 is an arrogant idiot who bungles things up in a funny way.One day when Pa Ku is out of the house, Tai Tzu-ping seizes the opportunity to take advantage of A Hsiang, but Fa Tsai hears whats going on and distracts him by shouting “Fire, fire” Tai Tzu Ping, quickly rings for the fire-brigade, and when the fireman arrive to discover that it is a false alarm they extort money from Tai Tzu Ping. This brings forth much angry shouting from Pa Ku because she loses her gold chain (presumably as a bribe to the fireman).Pa Ku and Tai Tzu Ping then plan to sublet a part of the tenement to Chen (Ku Feng); first getting rid of Fa Tsai who is a thorn in their side. They put some things in his room, and accuse him of stealing; but A Hsiang has come to Fa Tsai’s rescue by removing the “evidence”, thus frustrating the cunning pair’s plot. Pa Ku then takes No.369’s advice to give A Hsiang’s hand to the police superintendent (Yu Ming) as a concubine; afterwards using police influence to force the tenants to quit. The day of A Hsiang’s marriage to the superintendent arrives and Fa Tsai, with the help of other tenants, quietly escorts A Hsiang away to a hiding place. The superintendent is so infuriated that he has Pa Ku and Tai Tzu Ping arrested on a charge of malicious fraud, and all the tenants are over-joyed to see them in police custody.

The line “ Turn the tap off down there!” in the film is still imprinted in the memory of the audience. The film was adapted from a renowned theatre drama. With a cast consisting of many TV actors, this film was a No.1 box office hit at the time and also had been the talk of the town as it portrayed in depth a wide and varied situations of everyday life. In addition, this film marked the revival of the Cantonese film market and bore witness to how Cantonese films made a come back and gradually became the main stream of film production.