Hijas de Shandong

In 1948, civil war ravages the Chinese countryside, but in rural Shandong, the Ang family—wealthy landowning families—are more concerned with not having a male heir. Hai, the eldest of four sisters, spends her days caring for the younger ones. Di, a year younger and strong-willed, learns to hide in plain sight, and their mother—mistreated by the family for not having given birth to a son—finds small ways to rebel from her kitchen. When the communist army approaches their village, the rest of the prosperous family flees, leaving behind the girls and their mother, whom they consider useless mouths to feed. With no son to punish, the communist cadres confiscating land choose Hai, as the eldest daughter, to answer for her family's crimes. She barely survives their brutality. Realizing that the worst is yet to come, the women devise an escape plan. Hungry, penniless, but resourceful, they forge travel permits and embark on a journey of hundreds of kilometers to confront the family that abandoned them. From the countryside to the bustling city of Qingdao, passing through British Hong Kong and finally Taiwan, they witness the transformation of a nation and the suffering of the masses caught in the revolution. But with the loss of their homes and the lives they knew also comes a new freedom: the freedom to take control of their destiny, break free from the constraints imposed by their gender, and reclaim their own history.