A Hainanese Mother has lived her entire life for only one thing - to perpeture the male line of her husband's family. Relentlessly, in response to a call from her ancestral land. Relentlessly, she stitches patch-quilts to keep her children warm and safe.
Relentlessly, she forces her daughters to make similar sacrifices.
The male line, in the form of a brilliant, loving, caring son, turn out to be one incapable of perpetuation of the lineage. Desperately, he tries to escape from the matriarchal net of relentless love.
In the end, the woman's life-long aspirations are seemingly destroyed when the son sends his Mother his last gift - his own quilt decorated with an extraordinary one-legged bird. He apologised for failing them, but enclosed a document giving them access to a special bank where his essence of life is preserved should they still wish to perpetuate the male line - on their own accord.
