Hong Kong, 1940. When newly wed Elsa Jones, fresh out from Wales, loses her first baby, she is torn apart by grief and homesickness. War is coming closer – Allied soldiers start to appear on the streets and there are bomb shelters in downtown Wan Chai – but Elsa barely notices. Then the Japanese invade. After a humiliating defeat, European and American civilians are rounded up and taken to an internment camp on the south of the island. Now Elsa and her husband, Tommy, are faced with the task of surviving in a hostile environment where there can be no secrets. Told from the intimate perspectives of Elsa, Tommy, their Chinese amah, Lin, and daughter, Mari, The Rice Paper Diaries movingly brings to life the dramatic events in wartime Hong Kong, and lays bare the tragedies as well as the joys of coming home.