The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane: A Novel

Li-Yan lives in the Spring Well Village, one of the many villages of the Akha people. Akha people, are one of the many ethnic tribes of people who live in the Yunnan province of China. Li-Yan falls in love with classmate Sen-pa from the Shelter Shadow Village but their parents do not approve of the marriage. Li-Yan finds out she is pregnant with his child. Because it's taboo to have a child unmarried, Li-Yan end up abandoning her daughter at an orphanage with a tea cake instead of following tradition to kill the child. Her daughter, Haley, ends up being adopted by an American couple in California. Both Li-Yan and Haley is curious about each other and they hope to find answers about each other. A-ma can be very strict about things in the family but because Li-Yan is her only daughter, she tries to help Li-Yan during the pregnancy and conceal it from the family since its taboo to be pregnant when unmarried. Li-Yan had to give up her dream to past an exam to go to college but she wanted to make sure can provide a good life for her child. Her sacrifice for many things has helped her daughter obtain a better life. Although her life is a constant struggle, Li-Yan is able to relocate away from her Akha home to a trade school in Kunming to start off with a clean slate. The mother and daughter relationships are vital in the novel just like how the special ancient tea grove is passed down the family from mother to daughter. The women in The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane are strong women; they are resilient. Lisa See's The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane is beautifully written and it's compelling. Her narration is that of a well versed storyteller. She educates readers about the traditions and culture of the Ahka people. I found it very interesting to learn more about the Ahka people and See did her research well. The art of tea is explained exquistely throughout the book. I am a huge tea lover so I found it fascinating to read. Cultivating tea to brewing tea is very complex and tea aficionados will enjoy reading about the history of tea, especially of Pu'er. Through tea Li-Yan is connected to her family roots and most importantly to her daughter. The yellow threads in the tea cakes bring the family together. The novel is mostly in first person through Li-Yan's perspective. See starts the novel off with Li-Yan being about 10 and ends the novel when Li-Yan is in her mid to late 30s. Through letters and support group dialogue, readers peer into Haley's life and how she is doing. Although heartbreaking at times, See has captured the spirit of what it means to be a daughter and a mother. While Li-Yan is separated from her daughter, she yearns for her every day. Haley always thinks about her birth mother and the tea cake. The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane is a story about tradition, culture, family, love, loss, sacrifice, perseverance, new beginnings and origins. The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane is by far my favorite novel by See and it makes a wonderful reading companion to Snow Flower and the Secret Fan. I highly recommend this novel.

I have read all of Lisa See’s books and am an ardent fan. I traveled frequently to Hong Kong as an American businessman in the 80s, when the harbor was still filled with junks, and was in the first wave of foreign businessmen allowed onto the Chinese mainland. I ultimately lived and worked in China for nine years and have since read all of the Chinese fiction I can get my hands on. No other author that I have found appreciates and understands the nuances of Chinese culture as deeply as See. This book certainly meets her standard on that front but is admittedly not my favorite. It’s like tea, I guess; a matter of personal taste. There is an awful lot about tea, for sure. It is, in my experience, far more information than the average Chinese person could provide, but the storyline is built around it so that is not a criticism from me. It didn’t strike me as a book about tea as other readers obviously felt. This is the first time in my memory that See has tackled a protagonist from one of the 55 minority ethnic groups and that was a bold challenge that I thought she handled superbly. Truly understanding how the minority groups and the Han majority fit into the Chinese tapestry is a challenge for any Westerner, but I thought See brought her usual sensitivity and insight to the task. She also tackles the issues faced by Chinese orphans brought to the US as babies. My company in China actually sponsored a local orphanage and I gained quite a bit of insight into that unique slice of modern China. See does a very good job of characterizing the challenges that exist within China, but even though I have a Chinese wife (Dongbei Han), I have never fully appreciated what happens to these babies after they leave China. And I am thankful for See’s insight on that. Another huge literary challenge that she handled extremely well. My only reservation about the book is that while the rags-to-riches storyline, with a lot of pain along the way, is a modern Chinese story, it is an extremely rare one statistically. (Less rare in Southern California.) I’m not so much concerned with reinforcing false stereotypes, and I don’t think of it as a discredit to my friends and family who don’t fit that stereotype, as much as a lost opportunity. See is an extremely gifted storyteller with an uncanny insight into Chinese culture. I guess I would rather she leave the rags-to-riches storylines to others less gifted with her talent so that she can continue to give us more of what makes her so special as an author.

This book is a solid 4.5, but I rounded up to 5 stars because of how much I enjoyed it. This is outside of my usual preferred genres, and I truly only picked it was one of the recommended reads for the Women’s History Month bookmark on the kindle challenge and I figured I’d try something different. It far exceeded my expectations, and especially in the last half of the book I found myself eager to reach the end because I wanted to know how everything would be tied up. I saw some criticisms that there was “a lot” or “too much” minutia around tea making/brewing. For me, I didn’t find that to be true and I enjoyed learning some of the details of Pu’er and the tea market at that time. I loved learning of Haley through little letter like updates and school essays, while the main story focused on Li-yan. The entire journey was incredibly satisfying. “No coincidence, no story” indeed. Some parts were slow, and a lot of character development and growth, truly delving into culture and practices that to me are wholly new. There were some paragraphs I felt like I had to read a few times to truly grasp. Some of it was probably a bit too contrived (hence the tagline of the whole story), which is why I knocked half a star. In the beginning I wasn’t sure I was going to like it, but somewhere between the first and second parts of the novel, I found myself gaining more and more intrigue and interest. Probably the last 25 pages of the book were my favorite. Once i picked up on where this book was possibly headed, I couldn’t stop myself from barreling towards the end. I loved how See ended this novel, leaving much up to readers’ interpretation while still signaling the resolution we all hoped for. It was a book that left me wanting more, but somehow still satisfied with what I got. I’ll definitely be checking out some other Lisa See books if this is what I have to expect.

From girlhood struggles with a strong mother & village traditions to physical awakenings & insurmountable culture clashes we follow Li-yan of the Akha People, tea pickers enduring high in the south China mountains during the One Child Policy & post-Mao eras. Whatever Lisa See writes is sure to be grand in scope, womanly in vision & resoundingly memorable. Filled with the emotions to which we humans are susceptible & we women heir, The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane stretches across one girl's life as she stumbles from familiar fears, peeves & thrills in her small rite-bound racial minority village of one unifying trade: tea picking, into the maelstrom of modern Han-majority urban life; through apprenticeship to her mother the local midwife & healer to maidenhood on the cusp of sexuality & rebellion to damsel in distress to lost & alone among the dregs of her empty teacup until she can think of no other thing than to abandon that which has awoken her so she may make something of her life. While years of struggle ensue as she crawls out of her misery & learns to live among the Han-majority we readers become flies on the walls somewhere in America where Li-yan's daughter is being raised by an educated & well-off couple who know what they don't know yet don't have a clue... just glimpses, mind you, of who this child is becoming: what interests her, what she's feeling & how she meets other adopted girls from China, except Hayley is Akha, not Han. With focus & wits & friends, Li-yan becomes strong in her people's inheritance & lets herself be dusted with the luck of being in the right place with the right skills at the right time as China embraces economic entrepreneurship & the particular tea the Akha harvest. That this heroine does rise again in wisdom & skills while preserving her innocence is something we've come to expect in a Lisa See saga; her fables are fluid rites of passage through everyday cause & affects resolving into awareness & recognition, regret & agreement until the wounds of ignorance, greed & rejection are made well. One of this author's best: The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane is filled with things to learn - this time about ancient & modern tea culture: bush or tree; picking & preparing; flavors & fashion; health benefits & the unintended consequences of Han-majority's One Child Policy wherein thousands of unauthorized girl infants were readily adopted out to America - in this lucid odyssey of a woman discovering her loves & working for the blessings in her life. Do catch these other fine reads from Lisa See: Snow Flower and the Secret Fan: A Novel ; Shanghai Girls: A Novel Dreams of Joy: A Novel ; On Gold Mountain & more...

I am not familiar with the author or her work; I read almost exclusively fantasy and science fiction, and particularly military science fiction. And I read those books in Kindle format. However, my gift-from-God, happily-ever-after trophy wife Vanessa, the elegant, foxy, praying black grandmother of Woodstock, GA, handed me a copy of this hardback book and informed me I was to read and review it, at once. Ummm...after being pretty exclusive to reading e-books for the past several years, it's hard to return to paper. For one thing, on at least four occasions I found myself reaching for the trackball to turn the page. (That method doesn't work with a dead-tree version.) And you have make sure you have a light source wherever you want to read with a hard copy. But, I adapted. The first thing I got from the book: MAKE SURE YOU ARE NOT BORN INTO POVERTY. Although roughly as well-off as their neighbors, the family of 'Girl,' as she is referred to in the beginning of the book, is actually in desperate poverty, with hunger a constant companion. Cash is hard to come by, and the little bit they get for the tea crop is subject to a capricious market, so that every single bit of wealth must go to basic subsistence. Second: MAKE SURE YOU ARE NOT BORN INTO A PRE-SCIENTIFIC CULTURE. The youngest boy in Girl's village outranks the most important woman, and everybody accepts this as the way things are and must always be. The religious authorities can, and do, demand sacrifices of food and livestock from a wealthy family which can be ruinous. Infants are evaluated at birth for any defect, and those found wanting are murdered, as are twins. There is no appeal to a higher authority. Education, which in most nations provides the surest path out of squalor, is actually regarded as worse than useless, as it takes away hours from children who could otherwise be engaged in labor. Third, MAKE SURE YOU ARE NOT BORN INTO A TOTALITARIAN COUNTRY. The utter brutal repression Communist China experienced in the Great Cultural Revolution, The Great Leap Forward, and other dictatorial government actions destroyed lives. Even more deadly, the One Child policy, in a culture which highly valued sons, has actually already destroyed China's future irrevocably. The author mentions each of these catastrophic programs, and identifies horrible repercussions on the level of individuals, but wisely does not use this book as a platform to preach. Instead, she simply tells the stories, and it is up to the reader to decide whether or not to consider global implications. That approach is well done, indeed. Also well done is the management of of the story of a Chinese infant adopted by affluent American Caucasians. The issues of adoption and cultural identity are things my family has to deal with as well, and it's not all 'and they lived happily ever after.' The author does not attempt to come up with a simplistic fix for a knotty issue, and I appreciate the respect she gives the subject. I love the beauty of the poetry and the reverent attitude taken toward the entire culture of tea. It's enough to make me think about buying packets of the special blends as gifts, or even for investment potential. I would not have thought that so much could be said about growing, harvesting, processing, selling, and serving tea, but I found it fascinating. I suppose that the author loves her subject; that's what comes across, at any rate. There is a terrific climactic scene set up at the end of the book, and I'm not going to spoil it for you. However, since this is the first book I've read by this author, I had no idea as to whether she was the type to have the Princess Bride and the Farm Boy ride off into the sunset together, or the kind who would have Bond turn slowly and collapse onto the wine-red rug, (or have Homes go off the Reichenbach Falls, if you prefer). I can tell you this, though: I was RACING through the words at the end of the book, because I HAD to find out what happened! I am so very glad I had this book rammed down my throat. Thank you, dear!

Tea Girl captured me right from the start. I loved the story, the history, women of the story for their strengths, weaknesses and courage. Definitely a win in my opinion. Love Lisa's books!

A fascinating, wonderful book about the primitive, 20th century tea industry in the mountains of China. A baby born out of wedlock in a tea-growing village is immediately abandoned by mother at an orphanage and the years-long search by Mom to find baby and baby to find Mom begins. It's a page-turner that will teach you more about the tea industry than you ever thought possible. Plus the development of the major characters through the decades is exceptionally written. No spoilers here. You'll love this book even though, as my title suggests, it begs for one more ending chapter or an epilogue.

I really enjoyed reading about the Akha culture and about tea cultivation/production. I learned a lot and fell down a few Google rabbit holes. The relationship between Li-yan and her mother was one of the more interesting parts of the story. Lisa See is a talented writer and storyteller, and I've enjoyed other books of hers. As much as I liked the China parts of this story, however, the US parts did not mesh for me. The two parts didn't just read like separate story lines; it felt like they were from two completely different books. There were also a lot of too-convenient things in this book. One bit in particular that hit both those marks (not fitting and too convenient) was the therapy group in the US story line. It felt like it was just shoved in as a handy way to include a list of issues around interracial/intercultural adoption. I'm personally on board with that message and think it's important, but even given that, including it via this group of new characters who suddenly pop in to conveniently say their piece, then disappear ... it felt more like a commercial break than part of the story. This was one of the most deus ex machina stories I've read in a while -- and that's including some magical realism and sci-fi. Some events are just waaaaay too convenient, coincidental, or (and) unlikely. I'm talking over-the-top convenience, not just fancy-meeting-you-here convenience -- though there is that as well. Parts of this book are lovely story-telling, parts are super interesting and informative, but a few parts don't seem to fit at all. I could actually look past the convenient plot-movers more than I could the parts that seemed not to fit and the style/feeling of the US part of the book.

Excelente libro

Una storia un po' melensa e improbabile, zeppa di finali lieti e zuccherosi. Ciò premesso, il libro risulta interessantissimo sia per i racconti della vita nella Cina rurale dall'epoca post-maoista alla liberalizzazione, sia perché approfondisce le difficoltà di figli adottivi, sia per il valore divulgativo sul "pu'erh", il tè più buono e prezioso che ci sia. Una lettura imprescindibile per chi voglia avvicinarsi a questa straordinaria bevanda.

Having lived in China for a few years and familiar with the culture I have read a few Lisa See novels and enjoyed them so I naturally continued on into reading this one. I found the first part of the book slow going but found myself engaging with the main characters. The story opened up in the second half and became more interesting and I found myself wanting to see a happy conclusion. I got that for sure but little did I realise as a supposed 'blokey bloke' that I would be tearing up over the last couple of pages. I thought the ending was perfect, otherwise the story screamed out for another 100 pages of 'then what happened'. Hopefully there will be a sequel that carries the story forward as I think this novel deserves that.

It was for a friend but she loved it

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