The main character, Huang Shangkang, lives in a village in Guangdong province with his wife Ma and is addicted to opium.

When Shangkang's mother becomes ill, Ma pawns her few possessions to pay for doctors, but their remedies do not work and the old woman dies.

The novel describes the voyage from Hong Kong to Victoria via South Australia, life on the Victorian goldfields and in Melbourne's Chinatown, and events back in Guangdong, where Ma waits for news of Shangkang.

Although set during the second half of the 19th century, the story was written during the first decade of the Australian Federation and just before the end of the Qing Dynasty.

[6][7] The first English translation of the novel, by Ely Finch, was published by Sydney University Press in 2019 in a bilingual parallel edition with historical commentary by Mei-fen Kuo and Michael Williams.