In a community of cave-dwellers called Wudoung, their chief by the name of Wu had two wives and a daughter by each of them. Yeh-Shen is Wu's daughter of one wife, and she is extremely beautiful and kind, and gifted in many skills such as pottery and poetry. In contrast, her half-sister Jun-li, is plain-looking, selfish and lazy, and both she and her mother, Wu's other wife, envy the attention Wu lavishes upon Yeh-Shen. Yeh-Shen's mother died while she was still a baby, so Wu did all he could to raise his motherless daughter.