| Summary: | With a staff of nearly 1000 (including 300 chefs) and 5000 seats, West Lake is a combination theme park and eatery, offering a cross section of the country's changing society. Central is the restaurant's unstoppable owner Qin Linzi, a devout Buddhist, shrewd businesswoman and Communist Party member ... Through the lives of Qin and her family, the customers and the staff, the film builds a picture of who is thriving and who is struggling in this new economic climate. Many of life's most important rites of passage take place under the West Lake's roof and it through these celebrations - a wedding between a wealthy property owner and his beautiful bride, a 70th birthday party - that the film explores the lives of ordinary Chinese, their strong sense of family duty and the relationship between love and money in contemporary China.
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