Four narrators tell two stories, one of a contemporary Chinese-Canadian psychologist mourning the death of her father, another of two Chinese prostitutes in early 20th-century Singapore. As the novel opens in 1994, Wu Lan has just begun a year's leave of absence from the Vancouver, B.C., clinic where she sees patients: her father committed suicide at home in Singapore, and Wu Lan has had a breakdown after returning from the funeral. To distract herself, she begins researching the sex trade in Singapore, and Kwa introduces three other narrators: Lee Ah Choi, whose parents sell her into prostitution for three sacks of rice; Chow Chat Mui, who flees her father's sexual abuse only to find herself tricked into prostitution; and Mahmee, Wu Lan's mother, who grieves over her husband's death and her daughter's flight from her native city.