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The novel focuses on portraits of Chinese entrepreneurship and life in modern North America. Taking the difficult process of establishing a Chinese theater in Chinatown, California, by the wealthy Chinese businessman Ye Jiangnan and his family from 1906 to 1939 as the main line, it depicts the business competition among several Chinese theaters, how Chinese theaters in North America developed and prospered, and the entanglements between Chinese theaters and U. S. Government agencies such as the U. S. Immigration Service and the U. S. Department of Labor. It has created modern portraits of Chinese people in North America such as Ye Jiangnan, the owner of the Oriental Theater, Chen Huan, the wife of Ye, Ren Yonggui, the owner of the Guangtai Theater, Li Bo'an, a Chinese medicine practitioner, Xu Dingwen, the owner of the Fine Video Studio, Cai Die, the Chinatown socialite, as well as Chinese celebrities and theater troupes represented by Yaluo, Xiaofengwei, and Lan Zhaozhao. It demonstrates the important influence of Chinese theater and Chinese Cantonese opera on modern American society and culture, and also demonstrates the outstanding spirit of a generation of Chinese people who help each other abroad, and are tenacious and courageous.

The Taixing is the largest ancient shipwreck in China discovered by marine archeology so far. It is called the Titanic of the Orient because of the large number of victims and the huge treasures on board. During the Jiaqing period of the Qing Dynasty, Yu Qingyu, the son of Guangdong Yuzhang, and Tan Zhaoer, the daughter of Tan Zongshang, were childhood sweethearts. In order to escape the persecution of Zhao Daotai, the two boarded the Taixing ship in January 1822 and rushed to Nanyang. Tan Zhaoer gave birth to a son on the ship. Unexpectedly, the Taixing hit the rocks and sank. Tan Zhaoer died. Yu Qingyu and the baby were rescued ashore by a passing ship and survived. In 1999, Yu Haidong, the sixth generation descendant of Yu Qingyu, fell in love with a Chinese girl Xie Meiying in Singapore. Yu Haidong was accidentally responsible for investigating a sunken ship in the Grasse Strait, only to discover that the sunken ship was the Taixing that his ancestors were aboard. Xie Meiying finally discovered that she had been with Yu Haidong for a long time.