During a time of rigid moral code in China, a sixteen year old girl living in small riverside town discovers she is pregnant. The community is stunned, her family loses face and she and her boyfriend are expelled from their school; in the aftermath, her boyfriend leaves her, and she is forced to put her child up for adoption.

Ten years later, she is reduced to working as a singer in a local song and dance troupe, her only friend a young boy who protects her from the critical eyes of the community... until a marriage proposal probes the limits of their friendship and the depth of her unresolved past.