Anne, a young divorcee and mother of a 10-year-old daughter, heads for China to adopt a baby. She’s convinced, true Westerner that she is, that this is all for the wellbeing and happiness of the Chinese baby, her daughter and herself. Doubts, anxieties and worries are quick to arise, however, when she’s faced with unexpected discoveries about the Chinese encountered during the trip, as well her own behavior and that of her daughter. What’s more, China in the year 2000 is not at all the country that she had come to know through her childhood friend, a Chinese girl named Ling. It’s a whole new world: unknown, upsetting, exasperating, and difficult to understand, where, after a frame-up, Anne finds herself an outlaw. It’s a new woman who will return, with her two children, from this journey of initiation.