The narrator and his best friend Lou are sent to the Chinese countryside to be "re-educated" by the villagers. The boys are sent to a village on the mountain "Phoenix of the Sun". After hiking to the village, the boys are interrogated by the village's headman. He is suspicious of the violin they have brought with them because the people have never seen it before. After letting the boys show them how the violin works, the village people are enthralled by the sound the narrator's playing.
After the beginning celebration, the boys learn that the work in the countryside is hard and long. Lou figures out how to change the start of their workday by using the new technology from the city, an alarm clock. When traveling to see a friend in another village, the boys passed the little Chinese seamstress' father, the tailor on the way. The tailor recognized the boys as outsiders and yelled to them what he knew them for "Wy-o-lin", (violin). The boys visited the little Chinese seamstress a few weeks later to get Lou's trousers lengthened and immediately became friends. The girl even made them boiling water.
When the litte Chinese seamstress heard about thier storytelling talent, she invited them to retell a movie to her village. The trip though is more of a nuance than expected for the two boys, though because Lou has caught a bout of malaria. After suffering a beating in order to try and get rid of the sickness, Lou's infection only seems to be getting worse. When they arrive at the little Chinese seamstress' town, she calls four sorceresses to try and cure him. While watching over him, the soceresses become bored so to keep them awake, the narrator retells the story of The Little Flower Seller, which would have been the one told to the village had Lou's condition improved. The heartfelt line of the story, when told by the narrator made the women feel nothing, but when Lou delivered it, it was a different story. After all the emotion, from the line and Lou waking up, the little Chinese seamstress had nothing more to do but kiss the sick boy.
