Fernando is a 35-year-old ornithologist. He decides to go down a river in a kayak, hoping to find extremely rare black storks. Distracted by the beauty of the landscape, Fernando is soon thrown overboard by the current, and his motionless, bloody body reaches the riverbank.
Zhili, 150 km from Shanghai. In this city dedicated to textile manufacturing, young people flock from all the rural regions crossed by the Yangtze river. They are 20-year old, share dorms, eat in the passageways. They work relentlessly to be able one day to raise a child, buy a house or build their own workshop. Among them, friendships and romantic relationships dawn and come undone to the rythm of the seasons, the bankrupcies and familial pressures.
MARIA is 28, restless, wants to have every man and proud of speaking five languages. She flies to Taipei, lives on small jobs but what she wants more than anything is to finish her novel. Seven books under way, and none of them completed. She meets OLIVIER, a young expat. He is slow-moving, shy and can speak fifteen languages. As he welcomes her, she becomes calmer.
