When Lan comes home to Shanghai after 10 years in Europe she finds the city enigmatic: people she knew from childhood seem odd - her own identity is a mystery. An orphan, she tries to locate her biological parents. Her only clue is cricket fighting - an old Chinese pastime turned gambling racket. The deeper she digs into her own mystery, the more sinister it becomes. With cricket-fight gambling as the leitmotif, Shanghai Blue weaves belonging and estrangement, fatality and choice into a tight plot. When Lan finally unravels the truth, it is more harrowing than she imagined.