Mustard Seed Itinerary

by Robert Mullen

All roads lead 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 up through the giddy ranks of the Chinese civil service to become Prime Minister. Good fortune appears endless, not least when Miss Ling reappears 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―hand out, they can also claw back. Trouble is brewing inside and outside the city walls, and Po Cheng's eminence means he must now take the rap and face consequences inevitable from the start. Mustard Seed Itinerary is a brilliant first novel by an important new voice, bringing to the formal conventions of traditional Chinese literature the wry humour of Carrollian satire. As Mullen says, ‘In Daoism and Buddhism, dream journeys serve as voyages of discovery from which only a blockhead would return none the wiser. And Po Cheng is no blockhead.'

302 pages, Paperback

Published September 19, 2024

Reviews

[Loz Darwin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Well this was a very interesting and surreal story. In that it was all indeed a dream.
The characters I instantly warmed to for different reasons. Made me chuckle a fair few times.

Loved that a large amount of research must have been done into the Chinese culture and I've learnt a few new things.

And once again I adore the cover. Envelope Books thank you so much for the opportunity to read and review this.

[RF Brown]

An ordinary schoolmaster in an unenlightened imperial-age Chinese village, ruled provincially by a small-time dynastic family, journeys in a dream to the seat of the country's power, the Celestial City of the imperial family. This dream is the setting of Robert Mullen's absurdist "Mustard Seed Itinerary." There, schoolmaster Po Cheng is recruited by low-level functionaries to take the Provincial Examinations, and Po Cheng is ambitious to rise above his station and the snail's pace mundanities of the provincial class. Po Cheng's graduation is impeded by the depravities of the examiners, for which he is wrongly held responsible, and he flees Celestial City. He sets out on a dangerous but enlightening journey around the countryside casting about with impoverished monks, famers, artists, and con-artists. He observes and experiences the injustices and degradations poor citizens endure as results of the imperial family's indifference, stupidity, and desperate need to maintain power. Eventually Po's itinerary leads back to Celestial City, and the next level Imperial Examinations. However, without ever taking the test, an arbitrary Imperial decision installs him as an official in the intermediate ranks of the civil service. Now inside the government, Po comes to understand how the royals of Inner City maintain power not just by police-type force, but by the intentionalities of red tape.
Po Cheng's aspiration to participate in administrating the workings of bureaucracy, is reminiscent of K., the protagonist in Franz Kafka's The Castle. Kafka's novel is set in a remote European village where the meager lives of the citizenry are dominated by faceless authorities inside an unapproachable nearby castle. K., like Po, is summoned to the village to commence an appointment as land surveyor to the inscrutable government. However, an incommunicative system inside the castle denies K.'s appointment exists at all and K. gets tangled up in a futile and absurd struggle to access the castle and address the mysterious bureaucrats. Unlike K. in "The Castle," who seems existentially relegated to remain outside the center of power, Po in "Mustard Seed" gradually draws on his innate intelligence to advance up the ranks of government.
K. never gets inside the castle, but Po is promoted and promoted until he gets inside Inner City, appointed to the job of Chief Minister for the whole government. But, as Po is given more responsibility and power he works less hard, becomes personally alienated, and accepts moral compromises. When Celestial City is on the brink of war, coup, and destruction, Po's dream becomes a nightmare, his power an illusion, and Po is assigned responsibility for the imperial family's hubris as consequences becomes destructively real. "The Castle" explores the absurdity of someone spending their life imagining the fulfillments of penetrating a divine realm. "Mustard Seed Itinerary" explores the disappointments and illusions of power awaiting the common person who gets inside that castle.

[Susan Cowan · Rating 5 out of 5]

My impressions of Mustard Seed Itinerary by Robert Mullen are many. This is a book that I could not stop reading for too long as I would have lost the momentum and thread of continuity to enjoy this talented and exciting book thoroughly.
It is like time travel through China, starting in Nettle Village with two interesting school teachers, Po Cheng and Miss Ling, who attend an extraordinary village wedding in which Po Cheng drinks too many glasses of colourful home made liqueur, passes out by the river bank and ends up in Imperial China.
The wonderful descriptions in the book, from a quite ordinary mundane life in a village, through trials and dangers as Po Cheng in his dream state rises up the ranks in the Imperial City takes the reader on an adventure.
The fact that Po Cheng is a learned and wise man in reality makes his character endearing and there are some gems of Chinese wisdom in the book which adds to the story interest.
The descriptions of Nettle Village, especially Granny Wen’s back room drinking establishment with its lethal home made alcoholic drinks and the Ba family who seemed to rule everything in that small village are characters who would not have been out of place in a real Chinese Emperor’s Court.
I loved the ending too, which is the whole meaning of Mustard Seed Itinerary