A white man travels through China with his wife, a Chinese-American born in China, who lived there as a child. He didn't want to go, but her parents paid for the trip as a present and it was important to her and her family, who all live in China (her parents moved back) that he did. They go on guided tours in Beijing, Xi'an, Chengdu. The man is disinterested.

His mother keeps trying to call him, and he keeps blowing her off. His parents are divorced. They have never left the country. He comes from a small, poor town, where he was an anomaly, going to Duke and then graduate school at Harvard and a postdoc at MIT. His mother wants him to remember people from his childhood, and how they used to go camping and he would play cowboys and Indians. He remembers one Thanksgiving when he and his wife announced they were applying for passports to travel to Europe and his parents got upset and angry that he didn't want to just see more of America. His parents are ignorant and unsensitive when it comes to his wife's Chinese heritage.

He remembers winning an essay competition at Duke, writing about the damage of low expectations for kids. His wife countered that high expectations are damaging, too.

He meets the rest of his wife's family in Hangzhou, where they stay with various relatives. He continues evading his mother's calls. His wife's cousin, who has very good English, says his wife's Chinese is as poor as a toddler's. She hits her cousin.

She had at one point told the protagonist, "I get that you don’t want to see your family, but do you know what it’s like to have that choice be made for you? My parents chose to leave. I did not. I was lonely."

Later, she tells the protagonist her cousin called her an ABC (American-Born Chinese) even though she was born in China. She feels as if she's given up her birth country. She cries then brings up her parents, who changed their names to American names when they came to the US.

After this, his wife ceases to speak English or to translate her family's Chinese for him. His cousin translates. She becomes engulfed in her family, and he is pushed to the side. Watching TV one day, a white man living in China, fluent in Chinese appears. His wife's cousin says that could be him, and he says that's not his plan.

He talks to his mother this time, when she calls and barrages him with questions. The couple uses google translate to communicate, though the communication functions poorly.

On their last day, his wife asks to stay in China for awhile, months even, while he returns alone. She has been talking with all their former tour guides on WeChat. She wants to become fluent and literate in Chinese and become a tour guide. Though at first he refuses, the man comes around to it. His wife says she'll come back; she just needs time with her family.

In the US, he follows her WeChat blog. When they talk, she begins using English again and he begins to learn Chinese.