At the age of fourteen Pan Yuliang, an orphan girl in the care of her opium-addicted uncle, finds herself in the thirdclass cabin of a steamship bound for a strange new town. When Pan and her uncle arrive in the city he sells his niece to 'The Hall of Eternal Splendour', where she is destined to live out her live out her life as a prostitute in its smoky back rooms. And yet, two years later, escape appears in the unlikely form of a government inspector who will take Pan as his concubine and introduce her to a glamorous new life in 1920s Shanghai: a life of love and of art. But as Pan begins to realize her talent as a painter she also sees that she may lose something even more precious: a life of safety.
