Romantic story set in Macau during the 1930s. Rich, Portuguese man falls in love with poor, Chinese girl. Both families disown them and they begin a life together. Rich man now has to work for a living and eats Chinese food exclusively and the relationship gets stale.
A street-wise and tough orphan called Maverick is arrested for a petty theft and sent to an orphanage, but succeeds in concealing a watch he had stolen from an old shopkeeper just before his arrest. At the orphanage, he is recruited by a crooked warder for further and more serious crimes. But when two more children are admitted to the orphanage -- a boy called "Fatty" and a girl called "Little Mouse" -- he makes the first friends he has ever had. But when Maverick learns the girl is the granddaughter of the old shopkeeper he stole the watch from, and what ruin it brought to her family, he has a crisis of conscience.