This film explores the difficult, but changing relationship between a Chinese emigrant to Canada and her Canadian-born daughter. Daughter Lily often feels ignored by her mother and finds Suzan's Chinese beliefs and customs to be alien and constricting. Mom wants her daughter to live and speak Chinese, become a doctor, and marry a Chinese man. The rebellious daughter wants to be Canadian, mix in with her Caucasian friends, and marry a Jewish man.
Jewish son begins to heal the rift between parent and child and between cultures as well.
The two reunited in 1989 when Tanaka found her father living in a halfway house for the mentally ill on Los Angeles Skid Row.