Starting in 1972 when she is nine years old, Ling, the daughter of two doctors, struggles to make sense of the communists' Cultural Revolution, which empties stores of food, home of appliances deemed "bourgeois" and people laughter.
Eleven-year-old Shen serves as the favorite court musician of China's first emperor, Qin Shihuangdi, and is unwittingly caught up in a plot to assassinate the emperor.