Returning to his village invigorated by success in the army, Gao Aijun sees the beautiful Xia Hongmei walking barefoot alongside the railway track in the warm afternoon sun, and is instantly smitten. Hiding their relationship from their spouses, the pair hurl themselves into the struggle to bring revolution to their backwater village. They wait to consummate their relationship until Aijun has managed to dig a literal tunnel of love between their homes, where underneath the village their revolutionary and sexual fervor reaches a boiling point. While the unsuspecting villagers sleep, they sing revolutionary songs and shout Maoist slogans to each other before making earth-moving love. But when their relationship is finally uncovered, the couple finds themselves dangerously at odds with the doctrinaire and self-disciplined ideals of party higher-ups. Will their great revolutionary energy save their skins, or will they too fall victim to the revolution? Upturning the ideals of socialist realism, Hard Like Water is an operatic and surprisingly moving human drama about power's corrupting nature and the brute force of love and desire.