"The Shanghai Hotel is the story of a young woman named Yin Yin (Eugenia Yuan), who illegally buys her way to the USA from communist China hoping to make a better life for herself and her family. Falsely promised a job in the technology industry, her dreams are shattered when she is told by the Snakeheads, an Asian gang, that her debt is much higher than expected. To pay off that additional debt she will have to work it off by being a prostitute." (Quoted from website)