Sisters Jun and Zhen grew up as each other's best friend, scions of a noble family in the 1930s-the final days of Old China. The twentieth century brought a political revolution which separated the two for three decades. In Taiwan, where American support would eventually lead to a booming consumer economy, Jun married a Nationalist general and became a successful businesswomen, driven by both talent and ambition. Meanwhile, on the Communist mainland, her equally determined sister, Zhen, became a devoted doctor and, while suffering repeated persecution for her class background and "traitorous" sister, changed the lives of the desperately needy rural poor she was assigned to serve. Niece to both sisters, linguist and scholar Zhuqing Li interweaves her aunts' long-divided stories of survival, bringing unique insight to the bitter relationship between mainland China and Taiwan while forging one mesmerizing, cinematic narrative of two conflicted histories.