A one year contract to teach English at a university brings filmmakers Jocelyn Cullity and Prakash Younger to the city of Dalian on the northeast coast of China. Dalian is on the cutting edge of China's economic boom and is expected to become "the Northern Hong Kong" within the decade. But despite the bustle of the city around it, life on the university campus still runs as it did in the days of Mao Zedong - with mandatory morning exercises, Marxism classes, and manual labour. Over the course of the year, the filmmakers examine the growing effect of the social and economic changes on the hearts and minds of their students, primarily women, who are being trained to be teachers in China's state education system. As life on campus gives way to the sometimes harsh reality of the city that surrounds it, the students are confronted with new opportunities - and moral choices - for which they have no models or guides. By the end of the year they find themselves, like many Chinese today, stranded between two very different worlds.
A warm and intimate portrait of a generation in transition, "Going to the Sea" (Chinese slang for "going into business") is also an inquiry into the future of Chinese education and the changing status of women within Chinese society.