Synopsis
Widowed at 28, Tibetan farmer Zanta defies her tyrannical father-in-law. When Zanta’s in-laws won’t let her seven-year-old son go to school, she flees to Beijing to become a street merchant. Destitute and embattled by ethnic discrimination she inveigles a foreign customer, an American journalist, into helping pay her son’s school fees. When the three of them travel back to Zanta’s village for the New Year holiday, Zanta’s father-in-law takes her son hostage. The unwitting American journalist faces a tough decision: does she intervene in the violent family dispute or watch in silence?