China, the 1990s. In villages where female babies are drowned, there are few young women to marry the men and bear more sons. Families buy wives - girls lured from the city. Bai finishes college and accepts a job in a remote mountain village harvesting herbs. It's a ruse: she's sold to a peasant family. She's indignant; the parents hold her so the son can rape her. She tries to run away; she's beaten. Other women kidnapped a few years before, now with children, tell her to comply. She continues to try to escape. She writes to her father, smuggling letters to the mailman. She obtains a bit of money. The village is without pity, except for the teacher. Can he help her? Anger mounts.