The novel, written by Dai Sijie, is about two teenage boys during the Chinese Cultural Revolution, Luo, described as having "a genius for storytelling",[1] and the unnamed narrator, "a fine musician".[2] They are assigned to re-education through labor and are sent to a mountain called "Phoenix of the Sky" near Tibet to work in the coal mines and with the rice crop, because their doctor parents have been declared enemies of the state by the government. The two boys fall in love with the Little Seamstress, the daughter of the local tailor and "the region's reigning beauty". Residents of the small farming village are delighted by the stories the two teenagers retell from classic literature and movies that they have seen. They are even excused from work for a few days to see The Flower Girl at a nearby town and later retell the story to the townspeople, through a process known as "oral cinema".[3]: 204
Luo and the narrator meet Four-Eyes, the son of a poet, who is also being re-educated. Although he is succeeding in re-education, he is also hiding a secret set of foreign novels that are forbidden by Chinese law. The boys convince Four-Eyes to let them borrow the book Ursule Mirouët by Honoré de Balzac. After staying up all night reading the book, Luo gives the book to the narrator and leaves the village in order to tell the story to the Little Seamstress.[4] Luo returns carrying leaves from a tree near where he and the Little Seamstress had sex.
The village headman, who has just had an unsuccessful dental surgery, threatens to arrest Luo and the narrator for harboring forbidden ideas from The Count of Monte Cristo if they don't agree to find a solution to the headman's dental problems. The pair find a solution and turn the drill "slowly... to punish him".[5] Later, the headman allows Luo to go home to look after his sick mother. While Luo is gone, the Little Seamstress finds out that she is pregnant, which she confides to the narrator. However, since the revolutionary society does not permit having children out of wedlock, and she and Luo are too young, the narrator must set up a secret abortion for her. Luo comes back to the village three months after this unexpected event.
The Little Seamstress learns about the outside world by reading the foreign books with Luo's help. She eventually leaves the mountain and everything that she has known without saying goodbye, to start a new life in the city. Luo becomes inebriated and incinerates all of the foreign books "in [a] frenzy",[6] ending the novel.
