The Shen family of Jinling have been silk weavers for three generations. By Shen Huaiyuan's time, all that remains are his three daughters and twelve old looms.
At eighteen, eldest daughter Shen Yunjin takes charge of the family business in her father's place, struggling to keep the Shen family workshop afloat as foreign cloth floods the market. She sells the family's silk from the Qinhuai River to the Huangpu River, but cannot choose a partner for herself, until she meets Liang Qiming, an industrialist recently returned from Britain. He helps her bring in German looms and establish the Qiji brand. But when she faces off against Taihe Foreign Trading Company, which monopolizes raw silk along the Yangtze, at a chamber of commerce meeting, he realizes she wants more than a contract. She wants a trump card that can challenge the rules of the entire old business world.
After graduating from Jinling Women's University, second daughter Shen Yunxin opens Mingde Girls' School in an alley behind the Confucius Temple. Her students grow from seven little flower sellers into 117 girls who can write letters and keep accounts. When Shen Yunxin asks Shenbao reporter Gu Yanzhi to help her apply for funding, nobody at the newspaper knows that he proofreads her questionnaires every night, while she keeps safe the articles that have been cut from his copy.
Youngest daughter Shen Yunshang goes from a celebrated performer of The Peach Blossom Fan by the Qinhuai River to a dazzling movie star in Shanghai. After her lover betrays her and defects to the enemy, and the whole country turns against her, she fights back from rock bottom, wielding the stage as a weapon. At a Japanese army victory banquet, she carries out a thrilling patriotic assassination.
