Twenty-two year old David Braddock (James Snyder) is floundering - stuck in that lazy period between college and "what am I going to do with the rest of my life?" Even David's best friend, Sha (Anthony Montgomery) is concerned with his buddy's aimless attitude.

David's parents (Michael Gross and Priscilla Barnes) pressure him to find a direction. They want him to go to China to source factories for the family's business, and David eventually does give into his father's urging to "go east young man."

Once in China, he finds that it is much different from what he imagined: full of bustling modern cities as well as idyllic little villages. But here, just like back at home, nobody seems to take him seriously.

David travels to a place that the modern world hasn't yet altered and meets Mei Yang (Fei Fei Sun), a beautiful, ambitious young girl who works two jobs trying to save enough money so she can follow her dream of going to the prestigious Beijing University. Despite their language and cultural differences, a romance blossoms during the few short weeks that David is there.

He returns home to San Francisco changed by his China experience, but finds that his family's business is in more difficulty than when he left. Sha encourages David to go back and see things through: both business and romance, and together they head to the middle kingdom.

This coming of age, fish out of water story is a journey to another world, yet a world that is in many ways just the same as our own. Politics, cultural differences and distances cannot change the fact that we all share the same common humanity and the same basic desire: to love and be loved.