Tea-Time Tales from Chang’an

----- I've just started a new novel next door, The Green Tea Cousin in the Qing Dynasty Lies Flat After Being Spoiled by On-Screen Comments. Please add it to your reading list! -----

----- This novel's blurb -----

Spring: spring tea and chestnut osmanthus candy

Summer: fruit tea, yokan, and walnut cream

Autumn: flower tea, liao flower rolls, and flaky pastries

Winter: milk tea, red bean paste, and yam cakes

Year-round cravings, eating in an endless cycle

The Worry-Free Tea House, once unknown even in Chongren Ward, has reopened after a makeover. Even the names of its teas are elegant and refined: Moonlight White, Spring Unfamiliar; Rizhu Snow Buds, Snow Floating on a Jade Pool.

The tea house's proprietress has rosy cheeks and almond-shaped eyes, beautiful as the autumn moon. She brews excellent tea and makes exquisite pastries, drawing Chang'an's scholars and dashing literati to gather there.

Shen Ji, the Prefect of Jingzhao, stood by the street gazing toward the tea house, his heart aching. In the end, the bustle of ordinary life was what she loved most.

Inside the tea house, the charming proprietress brewed tea by the stove while trying to figure out how to soothe her put-upon prefect.

Reader's guide:

1. An alternate-history Tang Dynasty setting with plenty of original worldbuilding. Please don't take it too seriously.

2. Overall sweet and satisfying, with career development as the focus, food as a bonus, and romance when there's time.

3. The people around the heroine all grow and improve. They work hard together.

Theme: Live with passion, and find meaning in the ordinary