Rathenow, a rugged photographer in his late fifties, has documented all of the world's wars for the past thirty years. Tired of the horrors that have haunted his life, and now something of a cynic, he concentrates on glossy coffee-table collections of travel photographs.
His latest assignment is to travel through some of the less accessible areas of the Chinese countryside. Rathenow has a guide assigned to him by the government - a young, beautiful and captivating Chinese woman, Wang Liyun. The encounter with Asian culture in the person of Liyun is an experience that hits Rathenow unexpectedly. He begins to fall in love with Liyun’s sensitivity and grace, and before he knows it, his life has turned itself upside down. Rathenow is due to return to Germany, and he and Liyun arrange for her to follow him a month later. But on his day of departure, Liyun is kidnapped - the price for her release: Rathenow must act as a courier of narcotics to Berlin. Rathenow reluctantly agrees, seeing no other option, and delivers the drugs to Min Ju, the owner of the “Black Mandarin” restaurant in Berlin, a man both fascinating and repelling. Rathenow discovers that Min Ju heads up the Berlin chapter of the Triads, a terrifying gang who now have a hold over Rathenow - they are holding Liyun in China, and can now begin to blackmail Rathenow into working for them. Step by step, Rathenow sells his soul to Min Ju in order to retain some hope of ever seeing his beloved Liyun again. As he becomes more deeply involved in the mires of the underworld, he is eventually forced to kill. The Triads have now got him, and can begin to train him for his intended role as broker between the finance world and the gangsters... Rathenow is trapped in a vicious circle, stuck in an underworld from which there is no escape. Even when Liyun is returned to him, there is seemingly no way out. Eventually, Rathenow has to become one of them in order to take the Triads on at their own game, and is compelled to confront the darkness from both outside and within to save himself and his precious Liyun... . A Gemini film in association with ARD/ Degeto Film, Premiere and DGK