Tiger's Apprentice is the story of M. Trinh Nguyen's journey to her native Vietnam. She observes and documents her great-uncle's folk medicine practices treating many patients and making his medicines for tumours, leprosy, and infections. She also seeks out people cured by her great-uncle, talks to local doctors and herbalists, battle Vietnamese government censors fearful her footage might make them seem backward to the Western world, and ultimately realises that through her investigation she has unwittingly begun to apprentice.