What is the main conflict in Dreams of Joy: A Novel by Lisa See?

Dreams of Joy describes the events that occur when Joy runs away to communist China in the 1950s in search of her birth parents and true meaning in her life. After finding out that the woman Joy believed to be her aunt was actually her birth mother and that her birth father is an artist living in communist China, Joy steals her college fund and runs away in the middle of the night to China.