The central character, Xiao Qun, an elephant keeper at a zoo, is involved in a lesbian relationship with another young woman, Xiao Ling. There are two strands to the plot. One concerns Qun's efforts to hide her lesbianism from her deeply conservative mother, who is determined to get her daughter married before the age of thirty. The second concerns Qun's former lover Junjun, who reappears in her life on the run from the police.