The Accidental Immigrants | The Happiness Factory | Motherland | News | About
How far must you go to escape the rule of men and money?
Mo Moore has never liked her mercenary father and his rule over the family. But when he dies, she’s happy to take his money and leave her old life behind. She heads for a country where she knows no-one, somewhere fantastically new to her.
But China, it turns out, is ruled by old men and the pursuit of new money – a place not so different after all. It’s the mid-1990s, and the country is throwing off its Maoist past and propelling a billion people into a roaring consumerist present. Though not quite everywhere.
Clinging to the side of a southwest mountain Mo finds the untouched village of Pingdi. For centuries it supplied bespoke handicrafts to the Imperial bedchamber. Now, though, the village tradition is under threat from sex-aid megafactories disgorging plastic into the bedrooms of the world.
The sex market has turned to madness. And so Beijing does what it always does when things seem out of control: it cracks down. Pingdi – and adopted foreigner Mo – are caught up in a Strike Hard campaign. Can the villagers find a way round political panic and the morality police and pull off something special?
The Happiness Factory is about the families we run from and a love story to the families we make for ourselves – sometimes in the most unexpected places. An antidote to get-rich-quick stories from China, this is a who-needs-more? story about common cause, taking a stand, and the vast capital of human connection.
The Happiness Factory was published by Bluemoose Books in 2022.
© Jo McMillan 2025