The great Chinese artist Zhu Qizhan was born in 1892 and lived to be 105 years old. During his life, he witnessed the fall of the Qing Dynasty, the Civil War, the Japan's occupation of China, the Cultural Revolution...a full lifetime, packed with struggle, love, conflict and art. When the story begins, Zhu, the teller of tales, is 100 years old, still wanting to create, experimenting with form and colour. A lonely boy from the other side of the earth enters Zhu's world and through the artist's stories of the past, the present and the future, the boy learns who he is and what he can become in this beautiful, haunting story of growing up and accepting life's challenges - and its joys.