Summary

The novel opens with a short Prologue set in 1988, in which a young man and woman named Lina and Wei leave Shanghai for a new life in America. It is seen as a land of dreams and of the future, and this rural-born Chinese couple is both nervous and excited for the changes to come. Chapter 1 then moves forward in time to 2010, where a quiet, diligent, widowed woman also from a rural village named Sunny works as a maid in a glamorous hotel in Shanghai called the Lanson Suites. She and her colleague, Rose, have been accused of stealing a bracelet from one of the taitai (housewives) that they clean for. They resent the women that they work for, who can be snobbish, lazy, and bossy. It turns out that the residents that Sunny cleans for are Lina and Wei, who have...