Shun Li works in a textile factory on the outskirts of Rome and hopes to get Italian citizenship so her eight-year-old son can join her in Italy. When she is suddenly transferred to Chioggia, a small city-island in the Veneto lagoon, to work as a bartender in a pub, she meets Bepi, a Slavic fisherman, nicknamed "the Poet" by his friends, a regular at that pub for years and a writer of doggerel verse.Shun Li shares with Bepi stories of Qu Yuan, China's most celebrated poet, and the two strike up a friendship that has the potential to become something more. However the budding relationship is threatened by the objections of both the Chinese immigrant population and the local Italian fishing community.