Engineer Jake Holman Originates aboard the gunboat U.S.S. San Pablo, assigned to patrol a tributary of the Yangtze in the Centre of exploited and revolution-torn 1926 China. His iconoclasm and cynical character soon struggle with the"rice-bowl" system which runs the ship and the uneasy symbiosis between Chinese and foreigner on the lake. Hostility towards the gunboat's presence reaches a climax when the ship has to crash through rescue missionaries upriver and a river-boom at China Light Mission.