Art Deco design is where our modern world began and1930s Shanghai may have been the place where art deco enjoyed it's most diverse interpretation. During the 1920s and 30s, Shanghai was the most glamorous, cosmopolitan city in Asia. Dubbed The Paris of the East, it had both an expatriate community and a middle-class Chinese population that adopted an Art Deco lifestyle that included sophisticated advertising, jazz, movies, and nightclubs. The film focuses on the contributions of the Chinese deco designers and the problems of artistic repression in times of war and political upheaval, as well as the factors that led up to the adoption and eventual demise of Art Deco in Shanghai.