在大人和老师眼里,方枪枪不是个好孩子,他调皮捣蛋不听话,一进幼儿园,就被老师追着剪了辫子。方枪枪(董博文 饰)生活的幼儿园里有几百名小朋友,在那里他认识了杨南燕(宁元元 饰)、杨北燕(陈曼媛 饰)。幼儿园里有统一的标准管理着所有小朋友,按时拉屎、自己穿衣,表现优秀的人会被授予 小红花,贴在他们名字后面。慈眉善目的唐老师(李昕芸 饰)让方枪枪感到亲近,而不苟言笑的李老师则让他感到恐惧。 总也得不到5朵小红花的方枪枪在一次意外后,对小红花失去了兴趣。他编故事,给小朋友起外号等等。有天晚上他做了个怪梦,第二天醒来,他把这个秘密告诉别的小朋友,说李老师是一个吃人的大妖怪!……Qiang is a four-year-old little rebel, possessed of a pair of luminous eyes and a precociously indomitable will. His father deposits him at a well-appointed residential kindergarten in post-1949 Beijing, since his parents are often away. Life at the kindergarten appears rich and colourful, made up of a variety of cheerfully sunny rituals and games meant to train these children to be good members of society. But it's not so easy for Qiang to adapt to this kind of carefully organized, minutely scrutinized collective life. A fierce individualist in miniature, he tries but fails to conform to the model his teachers enforce. Yet he still craves the reward that the other students win: the little red flowers awarded each day as tokens for good behaviour. But Qiang doesn't win any flowers: he can't yet dress himself, and doesn't play together with the other kids. He even dares to talk back to the strict Teacher Li and Principal Kong when they try to impose some discipline on him. Gradually, his charisma and bravado start to win over his classmates: their stealthy little rebellions gain steam when he succeeds in convincing everyone that Teacher Li is a child-eating monster in disguise. When their attempt to capture her is thwarted, Qiang's resistance develops a more disturbing dimension, and he is forcibly ostracized from his companions. Will he succumb to the adult-enforced conformity around him, or will he insist on growing up his own way, by his own rules?