For three years Song Yan has filled her Beijing apartment with the tentative notes of her young piano students.

She finds herself adrift, but her husband seems reluctant for a child of their own. It takes the arrival of her mother-in-law, together with sudden strange parcels and stranger dreams, to shake Song Yan from her malaise. Summoned to an ancient house in the heart of the city, can she find the notes she needs to make sense of the pain and beauty in her life?