A tiny Chinese village is slated to be inundated by a flood, and the government offers resettlement checks and industrialized homes to citizens who relocate so that a dam can be built in the village’s place. A seed keeper and schoolteacher are among the last to stay behind.

As the People's Liberation Army ravages China, a resentful young woman charged with a strange mission leaves home to work in the city. Once there, she discovers terrifying connections between her rich new employer and the village she left behind.

A white American man and a Chinese-American woman visit the woman's family in China. After the woman's cousin compares the woman's Chinese to a toddler's, she stops speaking English and decides she wants to stay in China for awhile before returning, to reconnect with her family and her place of birth. Upon returning to the United States alone, the man, initially disinterested and unmotivated, begins to learn Chinese.

In a world brimming with magical realism, a young girl in Communist China confronts a malicious member of the Red Guard when he threatens her ailing grandmother.

In a Chinese village during the Qing Dynasty, a crippled man acts as a lawyer for the poor with the help of the trickster Monkey King, but his peaceful life is turned upside down when he comes into possession of a book that details atrocities committed by the government.

A Japanese businessman reflects on his experience with Chinese people and longs to visit China.

An old (76) man returns to his hometown in China after 66 years, to find that his mother has just passed away. With fanciful ideas of his assured prosperity in America, the village women seek to marry the old man.

After an elderly woman, is kicked out of her son's home, she breaks into a stranger's house and begins to secretly live in his closet in Hong Kong.

Young woman recounts her childhood growing up in China in the 1970s and meeting the old maid that the village has ostracized, this encounter forever changes her.

After her grandmother—her last living relative—dies, a poor young Chinese girl in a small village that treats her cruelly finds hope in a unique flower. Ultimately, her deepest untold desires are granted.