Coco leads an intense life in the lively subculture of the boomtown Shanghai. It revolves around endless nights spent in the Shanghai club and art scene, sex, literature and the writing of her first novel.
Her life takes an unexpectedly complicated turn when she suddenly feels attracted to two very opposite men.
One is the young Chinese artist Tiantian, a melancholic and sensitive painter with a complicated family history. He leads the live of a true bohemian, sustained by the money his mother sends from abroad.
In their quest for art and beauty they are soulmates. Coco develops feelings of exceptional tenderness for him. He seems to be her ideal love.
Marc from Berlin is completely different: masculin, physically very attractive, he is an internationally active business consultant who begins a passionate affair with Coco.
Coco is torn between her love for Tiantian and Mark‘s physical attractiveness – even when she learns that he is already married, has a child and will possibly return to Berlin.
Coco briefly succeeds in experiencing both lust and love with the same intensity. But when the melancholy Tiantian ultimately sinks into heroin addiction and progressively deteriorates, Coco‘s dilemma comes to a head.
She is caught between Far-Eastern traditions and Western lifestyles, between romantic love and unbridled lust. Too late she discovers that she has succumbed to Mark. Lossing both men and without any stable orientation, she errs through modern-day Shanghai, and only on a trip to Berlin she can recover herself.