In the late 1980s, the long delayed Chinese economic reform is in full swing. As part of its strategies of a pattern of all-round opening, a newest province – Hainan Province - has just been formed. It has granted a status as the largest Special Economic Zone (SEZ) by the Chinese central government with a high degree of economic preferential  policies   allowing  it    to   utilise  an   unique  conductive management style to do business in a way that it is unavailable in the rest of the mainland China, creating a sensation of ‘Hainan Heat’ that attracting many young and ambitious graduates to go to Hainan to pursue their dreams for a better life.

​

It’s a love story about how unpredictable life can be with the unprecedented opportunity at the turning point of the transformation of China from Planned Economy to Market Economy and the two-way employment that has brought to the individuals in a thrilling way.

​

Twenty-seven-year-old Kathy Liao takes a two-week holiday to Haikou, the tropical coastal capital of the newly formed Hainan Province in the southernmost China, to see what life that the largest Special Economic Zone (SEZ) can offer.

​

She sends out a reference letter given by a friend who is the secretary of the mayor of her hometown, to the secretary general of the Haikou - the capital of Hainan Province - municipal government Mr. Liu Zhong Xiang, who opens the door of the city’s growing prosperity for her. She swiftly becomes a training-journalist at the city’s Morning Daily before her two-week holiday is over.

Her life is taken by a series of twists, both emotional and professional.

​

She lost her job within two months of her employment as the result of failing an ill-arranged interview to the governor of the Hainan Province before her internship is completed. Yet, she’s unexpectedly rising from a dead end by a twist of the decisive interference whose force is outside of her awareness, she becomes an official journalist of the Haikou Evening Newspaper.

​

She falls in love with the smart and striking Mr. Lee Yi Fong, a rising entrepreneur of an energy source and heavy industry group of Beijing, who comes from a family of an influential privileged background with a great future, and is married.

​

She is soon headhunted by HYK, one of the world’s leading multinational conglomerates, who is responsible for a national development plan of Yangpu Project, a pilot programme as a symbol of the yardstick of Chinese economic reform and openness. Kathy  becomes a PR of the transnational company.

​

She is at the peak of her career when the Tiananmen Square event takes place, resulting in the imposition of the coalitional economic sanction by the West, which immediately leads to the Yangpu pilot programme being postponed indefinitely.

​

While waiting for the economic sanction to be lifted, she begins to form a strong friendship with her future boss, the commander-in-chief of the Yangpu Plan, Mr Philip Wang, who is an American Chinese, and based in Hong Kong.

​

Despite the distance between them, Mr Philip and Kathy communicate by letters and phones as pen pals. The similar inclination and temperament and the great respect of each other, it takes their friendship from the generational gap going beyond the reality of the circumstance.

​

Being forced to resign from her job following a run-in with a well-connected office bully, her wish for working at the heart of the national development plan is not only ruined by the economic sanction but also by the fatal personality clashes.

​

At the critical moment, she is saved from her despair by Philip’s suggestion that she leaves China to study in London. She rises again, from the end game.

​

Just as she is relieved that her fate has turned, little does she realise that the ramification of the unpredictability seems to endlessly follow her, full of twists and turns along the way of the process of getting her passport and visa done.

​

While the risky strategy of quitting HYK to go abroad in a hurry without being properly prepared in every level makes her an outcast? Or she risks everything on a single venture for a new life of God’s will? Can she survive? Will she remain in China?

​