Coral and her slacker boyfriend, Red, live on the ground floor of a tower block in the megalopolis that is twenty-first-century Beijing. Red thinks jobs are for idiots and just wants to play Frisbee; Coral makes ends meet by working in a video rental shop. They eat fast food, try to ignore the claustrophobia of having twenty-five storeys above them, and lose themselves in sex. But then, one day, someone sends Coral a dried eel through the post. As the smell of the sea floods her small flat, she is transported back to the fishing village where she grew up - the Village of Stone she has tried so hard to forget. This haunting, beautiful novel tells the story of one little girl's struggle to build a life for herself against all odds. At the same time it is an incisive portrait of China's new urban youth, who have hidden behind their modern lifestyle all the poverty and cruelty of their past.