Based on true events, Aftershock is an epic-scale drama that tells a heart-wrenching story that took place during the 1976 Tangshan Earthquake in China that cost over 240,000 lives.   

 

When a mother is told by the rescue team that her two children are buried under the debris close to each other, and digging one out would result in further collapse of the wreckage on the other, she is forced to make the most difficult decision of her life. As the clock ticks away, she finally ends her struggle and chooses to save the toddler son, but her heartbreaking decision is overheard by the little daughter. Left for dead, the young girl miraculously survives and is rescued after being buried for days. Suffering from the emotional shock of the disaster and the painful memory of her mother's choice, she refuses to reveal who she is. She is put up for adoption and later moves to the US, becoming a doctor as an adult. But shadowed by the traumatic experience in her childhood, she forever remains emotionally closed up. When the Sichuan earthquake takes over 80,000 lives in 2008, she volunteers to join the rescue team and returns to her homeland, China. As she witnesses the tribulations people go through when a natural disaster takes place, she finally unlocks the pain she had felt all these years and finds forgiveness. She finds and reunites with the mother she had parted  from 32 years ago.