Background and Brief Synopsis

Mei Li Goodson is a Chinese American high school senior nearing graduation. Like many of the other students, she is anxious about what lies ahead after high school. But unlike the others, she is also struggling with self-identity, an internal crisis intensified by a recurring dream where she is being called from the shadows by a Chinese man and woman she doesn’t know. For months, every night, she has the same dream. A man and woman are reaching to her trying to grab her hands to pull her toward them. They never reach her, and the dream ends the same way. She wakes up cold and shivering.

Mei Li was adopted as an infant not long after the Tiananmen Square student protests in 1989. She has a normal family life in Connecticut with her adoptive parents, John and Lia, in a loving and nurturing home. Things were fine until Mei Li’s recurring dream began. John and Lia, try to help Mei Li by encouraging her to stay focused on what lies ahead after high school. But they are unable to divert Mei Li’s attention from the dream. She believes there is some real-world significance to it – as though it is not a dream at all.

One night, the Chinese couple finally reach Mei Li, grab her hands, and pull her into darkness with them. Afraid, she closes her eyes until she is no longer being pulled. When she opens them, the man and woman are gone and she is alone, in China, on the banks of the Lijiang River, in Guilin, “the most beautiful place under heaven.”

Mei Li begins her journey here, on the river bank. Soon, she will meet her birth father, visit the village where she was born, experience the Chinese culture in the most magical way, and find out who she truly is and where she belongs.