Mai is a seventeen-year-old girl growing up in a small village in central Vietnam. Mai's mother works hard to support the family while her father is more interested in chasing other women than helping his children. Mai wants to help her mother with the bills, but work is hard to find in the village, so when a broker tells her he can arrange for her to work in an embroidery shop in Saigon, she jumps at the chance. However, when Mai arrives in the big city, she finds that she's been lied to, and that she's expected to make her way as a prostitute.