Mustard Seed Itinerary

A modern-day Chinese schoolteacher falls into an alcoholic sleep and dreams himself back a thousand years, scaling the heights of the imperial civil service—and then finding himself stranded.

All roads leads to the celestial city, and when schoolmaster Po Cheng drinks too much and falls into a dream, he finds himself on just such a road. Assisted by teaching colleague Miss Ling, Po Cheng reaches the imperial capital, rising through the giddy ranks of the Chinese civil service to become prime minister.

Good fortune appears endless, not least when delectable Miss Ling reappears in his life as an artist’s model who has changed her name to Precious Pearl so she can pose in the Forest of Brushes Academy of Art without her parents finding out.

But what Heaven—and alcohol—give, they can also claw back. With trouble brewing inside and outside the city walls, Po Cheng’s career and life seem fated, and he must now take the inevitable consequences of his rise to fame and power.

Mustard Seed Itinerary is a hilarious first novel, bringing to the formal conventions of traditional Chinese literature the wry humour of a Carrollian satirist.