No well brought up Chinese girl refers to herself in the first person, so the author tells her charming story in the approved Chinese fashion. How, as the fifth daughter of a hard-working Chinese tailor, she and her sisters lived in a San Francisco basement, cutting, sewing, and sorting hundreds of men's overalls for the wholesale market. How she went to school and later, in face of parental opposition, to college. Of her quiet persistent struggle to use her knowledge and talents which finally lead to her father's acceptance of her as an Independent person.
But besides making us acquainted with her own attractive personality, Jade Snow Wong gives fascinating descriptions of Chinese ceremonies, festivals and customs, such as the treatment of the bride after the wedding ceremony, and the even more surprising one of Gathering the Bones.