This is a riveting narrative of the life of Tia Zhang, a young Chinese ballerina who came of age during the reign of Mao Zedong. The story takes place in Beijing, China, and spans over a period of nearly 50 years, blending the most intimate moments of Tia's personal life with a whirlwind of horrific historic events. At the age of twenty, she was promised to an arranged marriage but fought for her freedom to choose her own future when she met and fell in love with a young military athlete her family refused to accept. In 1966, with the onset of The Cultural Revolution, she came under attack by Red Guards and for the next few years, she lived in constant fear as the execution of unspoken atrocities became the order of the day. While Tia managed to escape many of those atrocities, the man she loved was not so fortunate. Wrongly accused of committing crimes against the communist government, he was branded as a traitor, and condemned to a labour camp with no guarantee that he would ever return to Beijing. Tia eventually faced a similar fate and was sent away to live in a crowded, filthy, barracks where she worked from dawn to dusk in rice paddies, isolated from everyone she loved, including her precious 56-day-old son.