Fresh from art college, Johnny is looking for an exciting location to begin his career as a painter. Where better than Hong Kong? But far from living in the fast lane among the bright city lights, Johnny finds himself in a small Chinese village where a band of aging expats take a shine to him. With Lucy's cafe as a base, Johnny encounters the colonial past, the plight of the Vietnamese boat people and the thrill of the village dragon boat races. Will this colourful landscape be enough for Johnny? Or will his brush run dry? Here, in her second evocative novel about life in 1980s Hong Kong, Esther-Margaret Hood shows readers another side of the former British territory"