When Sunny is born in a rural vilage on the Yangtze River, her parents dump her in a slop bucket and leave her to die because she isn't a boy. Sunny survives, and at 14 leaves home for a Shenzhen factory to fund her brother's education. There she works grueling shifts cleaning toilets and dreams of promotion. Desperate to maximize her only capital--her youth--Sunny attends self-help classes and learns ways to improve her chances at securing a coveted office position. But when her dogged attempts to pull herself out of poverty hurt a fellow worker, Sunny begins to question the design of a system she has spent her life trying to master, and starts to fight for an alternative.