Yu Hong leaves her home village and starts university in Beijing, where she develops a consuming and compulsive relationship with another student. The student riots from 1989 then ensue and take a toll on their lives.
This is the story of Mei, a young woman on a trip from East to West after her escape from her provincial Chinese village. Beginning in Chongqing and a disastrous factory job, Mei soon heads out for London and a marriage to an older man where her entrapment begins anew.
Nina, daughter of a Greek woman who left Egypt in 1956, goes for the first time to Alexandria, discovers the city and the longing of her mother to tell her an old love story that she had years ago with a French. but the mother doesn't tell her the truth, who knows why.
