Lu Jiang goes to the United States to study in 1989 when her marriage breaks up. On the airplane, she happens to sit by a sad Chinese writer, also a political exile. Their story starts to develop and ends a decade later when he dies in her arms. In New York, she meets a group of Chinese students who become her lifelong friends. Two years later, Lu Jiang returns to China to teach and to bring up her son. When routing through Europe, Lu Jiang meets an ambitious man in London whose aspiration is to build a strong and prosperous China. Their friendship evolves into love after they meet again in China. Yet their relationship brings them more pain than they can possibly foresee. Years later, many of her friends return to China, too, and become pillars of society. This book tells the life stories of Lu Jiang and her friends over a span of thirty plus years. Tasting all flavors that life has to offer, they age as they witness in pride the advancement of their motherland, which their generation helps to bring about.