- Follows the lives of several people in Hong Kong in the time leading up to the handover of sovereignty of Hong Kong from the United Kingdom to the People's Republic of China.
- Stewart Wilson, "taipan" of a prominent trading firm in Hong Kong, goes jogging on Victoria Peak one morning in 1995 and dies of a heart attack. His death brings together six people who become entangled socially, romantically and politically against the backdrop of Hong Kong's imminent handover to Mainland China in 1997.
Wilson's best friend, the anglophile billionaire Peter Ma, takes a more-than-avuncular interest in Wilson's niece, the social-climbing TV host Kathy Ridgeway. Wilson's widow Barbra is courted by the mysterious Daryl Wong, who discovered her late husband's body and who turns out to be something other than the stockbroker he claims. And Wilson's mistress Clara So, an artistically inclined political firebrand who is supposed to be Ma's niece, renews a less-than-platonic acquaintance with Kathy's estranged beau Steve Elliot, a cynical American journalist.
All these relationships come to a head while the characters' perceptions of 1997 are re-examined at the opening of Barbra's new art gallery, when Clara stages a piece of politically controversial and socially scandalous performance art called SEX, MONEY & DEMOCRACY IN HONG KONG.
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