The Shanghai Hotel is the story of a young woman named Yin Yin (Eugenia Yuan), who illegally buys her way to the USA from communist China hoping to make a better life for herself and her family. After a long, treacherous journey stowed away in a dark hull of an overcrowded cargo ship, Yin Yin arrives in New York City for what she thinks will be the beginning of a better life. Falsely promised a job in the technology industry, her dreams are shattered when she is told by the Snakeheads, an Asian gang, that her debt is much higher than expected. To pay off that additional debt she will have to work it off by being a prostitute. Yin Yin is devastated by the news that she is being sold into the sex slave trade. The rundown, decrepit building that Yin Yin and the other prostitutes live and work in is known as the Shanghai Hotel. Women from Thailand, Korea and China all reside in the Shanghai Hotel.