Dr Jaqueline Silver, professional engineer and explosive expert, needs money to pay for damage to an expensive yacht. She reluctantly accepts a lucrative contract in China. Jaq makes two trips east - the first is an all-expenses-paid official business trip but the joint-venture factory she is sent to visit vanishes overnight. She returns to the UK to take up a job in the northernmost part of Scotland, a windfarm on the Shetland Isles. Concern for a former Teesside University student prompts her to return to China. On the unofficial low-budget visit she sees a different side to the country. A road trip takes her from Shanghai to Zhengzhou, from the Shaolin Temple - home of Kung Fu - to the rare earth mines of Jiangxi. She outwits corrupt police, duplicitous industrialists, only to come face to face with death near the Banqiao hydroelectric dam.