 Passing
Under Heaven
 Ciao
Asmara
 The
Drink and Dream Teahouse
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Justin Hill was only
twenty-one when he arrived starry-eyed in Yuncheng, central China, a
small town hidden among the plains of dusty Shanxi province. He was
greeted by a place and people designed to shatter the most tightly
held of illusions about the glories of Chinese tradition and
culture: an ugly grimy town where spitting in public was encouraged
and queuing was anathema, where the local TV output consisted of
nightly readings of the works of Deng Xiao Ping interspersed with
NBA basketball games. But after two years teaching Yuncheng's
inhabitants he emerged knowing that nowhere was more authentically
Chinese than this outpost nestling in the bend of the Yellow River,
battling the contradictions of past and future with robust good
humour.
'A Bend in the
Yellow River is a sympathetic and intelligent portrait of a
once-great civilisation in turmoil - embracing the ideals of a
market economy, but unable, or unwilling to jettison the past; of
the effects of the Cultural Revoloution, which left a large section
of the population deprived of an education, of the devastation of
the one-child policy. Witty, quirky and touching, this is a stunning
view of another way of life.'
'A lively and gifted
writer...a cheerful narrative seasoned with amazement' Times Literary
Supplement
'A rattling good story
of hilarious cultural misunderstandings...a first class
introduction to contempary China, recounted with good humour and
refreshingly free of political lectures'
Mail on Sunday
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