AllMovie

A winner of a few awards in Asia, this film is about Pai Mei (Lu Hsiao-feng) a young woman who was sold into prostitution by her foster family when she was still a child. In spite of her degrading and dangerous existence, Pai Mei decides to get pregnant and have the child she has always wanted, and then she leaves the brothel to go work on a farm. Her kindness as a mother, the transformation in her life, and the quiet, serene side of rural living -- with neighbors willing to help when they can -- creates a hopeful ending that fits with the rest of this completely fictional story from Communist China.