When Lu McLean sells all her possessions and leaves Los Angeles to study Mandarin Chinese at the Beijing Language Institute, she imagines a life of serious scholarship and an eventual job as a translator at the United Nations. On the night of her arrival, Lu meets the captivating, Ming, a Chinese teacher at the institute. Still recovering from a failed ten-year relationship, Lu has vowed never to give her heart away again.

But as Lu struggles to balance Beijing's simple beauty with the confounding rigidity of ageless custom, her feelings for Ming deepen. She soon finds herself vacillating between letting herself love Ming and her escalating fears about the certain barriers that would prevent them from ever navigating a life together. Against the backdrop of China's Spiritual Pollution and a tightening cultural climate, it becomes clear that Ming cannot leave—and Lu cannot stay indefinitely. Events soon force Lu—and Ming—to balance the love that binds them against the social and political forces that threaten to tear them apart.

The Language of Light seamlessly interweaves the expressive and timeless beauty of the Chinese language with the poignant tale of a profound love, inveighing against the oppressive climate of cultural and political change.