The Drink and Dream Teahouse - Tapa blanda

Justin Hill knows China inside out. Every sentence is filled with knowledge, affection and a poignant sense of loss --Washington Post

A fine novel... The Drink and Dream Teahouse is very well written and creative, a wonderful antidote to much writing about China, whether the three-generation-fiction style of Wild Swans or the backward-looking bitterness of most recent memoirs --Frances Wood, Times Literary Supplement

This is intelligent and interesting novel about the clash between Chinese communism and Western capitalism. And the struggle between the two ideologies is focused exactly where it should be in family life.... The Drink and Dream Teahouse has many passages that are extremely moving...its thoughtfulness reflects well upon the author, who shows promise as an engaging storyteller --Mary Loudon, The Times

When Space Rocket Factory Number Two closes down in the small Chinese town of Shaoyang, it is the signal for the old culture to confront the new. Party Secretary Li cannot cope, and commits suicide, but not before daubing a series of slogans onto sheets of rice paper and hanging them outside his bedroom window (Our Leaders Are Drunk On The Taste Of Corruption reads one; The Party Officials Are Screwing Our Daughters, reads another).Those left behind have to clear up after him: Old Zhu has to keep Party Secretary Li's ashes in the bottom of his wardrobe. On the other side of the courtyard, their aria singing neighbour Madam Fan is temporarily silenced by the tragedy. Meanwhile Old Zhu's son, Da Shan, has returned from the city and fallen in love with not one but two childhood sweethearts. Banned in China