The life of Tao, and those close to her, is explored in three different time periods: 1999, 2014, and 2025.

China, 1999. Childhood friends Liangzi and Zhang are both in love with Tao, the town beauty. Tao eventually decides to marry the wealthier Zhang. They soon have a son he names Dollar... From China to Australia, the lives, loves, hopes and disillusions of a family over two generations in a society changing at breakneck speed.—Ipsith

In 1999, in the province of Fenyang, Shen Tao is a twenty-five-year-old woman that works in the shop of her father. She spends her leisure time with her friends Zhang Jinsheng, who is a wealthy man, and Liang "Liangzi" Jangjung, who is a worker in a coal mine. Their friendship becomes love and hate, when Jinsheng and Liangzi dispute Tao. She decides to marry Jinsheng, and Liangzi leaves the town. In 2014, Liangzi finds that has cancer and moves back to Fenyang with his wife and child to be treated. However, hospital and chemotherapy are expensive and Liangzi can not afford. His wife looks for Tao, who is divorced and has a gas station, to beg for money and she pays his treatment. Meanwhile, her father dies, and her seven-year-old-son Daole leaves his father Jinsheng, who is wealthier and remarried in Shanghai, and comes to the funeral of his grandfather. In 2024, Zhang "Dollar" Daole lives in Australia and is learning Chinese with the middle-aged teacher Mia. He has relationship and communication problems with Jinsheng since he wants to quit college. Soon he has an involvement with Mia that try to convince him to visit China.—Claudio Carvalho, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil