Bai Ke

In the 1990s, a group of students on the campus of the Chinese Southern Academy of Arts are pursuing their studies and preparing to face the world. China is opening up to the West and the students’ lives are a tangle of love stories and friendships, artistic research, ideals and ambitions brought about by new influences. Caught between tradition and modernity, they have to decide who they want to become.

In 1900, the mysterious murder of a white woman and a Native American man in San Francisco's Chinatown triggers a race against time as the Chinese suspect and the Native American's adopted Chinese son work to uncover the truth while a politician seeks to leverage the Chinese Exclusion Bill as well as the prevailing xenophobia and racism to close down Chinatown and elect himself as the mayor.