In some Western countries，the application of international community clubhouse model for the rehabilitation of the persons with mental illness has witnessed positive effects. In this paper，the authors employ a case study approach by taking the T-clubhouse in Kunming as an example，to illustrate the application of the above model in mainland China，to explore the strengths and weaknesses of the model and finally to analyze the main problems for developing the model. This study shows that this clubhouse model is effective for the rehabilitation of the persons with mental illness，such as increasing the respect and empowerment for the persons with mental illness，development of their job skills and helping them adapt to their “normal” life in the community through meeting theirand family needs. However，an extensive application of the clubhouse model in China will face certain challenges：Firstly，there is a lack of respect for human rights of the persons with mental illness in the whole society；Secondly，thecommunity support system is still immature；Thirdly，there exists a certain conflict between the clubhouse model，the current welfare system and the culture in China. In short，the clubhouse model does provide a positive experimentation for the community-based rehabilitation of the persons with mental illness. But，if we aim to extend this service model from local to the whole country，we still need to deepen our thinking and research on refining this model to match with local circumstances.