The Tea Girl Of Hummingbird Lane

THE TEA GIRL OF HUMMINGBIRD LANE

by Lisa See

 

Nomination: Dublin Longlist 2019

 

Date Read: April 1, 2022

 

Liyan is a member of tightly-knit Chinese minority tribe called the Akha. Their lives revolve around the seasons, especially as they relate to growing tea, strict rituals and family. Everyone in the village – the old and the young – participate in the growing and picking of tea. This is their sustenance and their identity.

 

As with all children, Liyan dreams of breaking free and seeing more of the world. She is willful and manages to convince her family to let her attend school. She falls in love with the wrong boy – the one her parents warned her about – and she gets pregnant before he is off to make his fortune in Thailand. While gone, Liyan gives birth to a daughter, one she knows she can’t keep because being born out of wedlock makes her daughter a human reject.

 

With no other choice but to kill her own flesh and blood, she abandons her daughter outside of an orphanage, one of few in China. The very act of abandoning her baby is an act punishable by prison, and perhaps death. Although her marriage to her daughter’s father goes tragically wrong (don’t you hate it when parents are right?), Liyan will spend the rest of her life searching for her lost daughter, a missing piece of her heart.

 

Both Liyan and Hailey end up living fulfilling lives and are blessed in numerous ways. Liyan becomes a tea master at a time when tea is treated as currency that is constantly on the rise. She is the equivalent of a tea sommelier and has part ownership in a shop. She meets a kind, rich and generous man and enjoys living a life she’s never dreamed of.

 

Hailey is adopted by an American family and while that comes with its own challenges and guilt, she is afforded every opportunity. She goes to the best schools, including Stanford for college, but just like Liyan, she feels something is missing.

 

This novel was so compelling and I was hooked throughout. Lisa paints such vivid and, clearly, well-researched prose. I never knew about minority tribes in China. I had some inkling of the fate of Chinese daughters, of which the fictional Hailey is truly blessed. With all the twists and turns, cultural insight and palpable longing for home, this novel just sang. Now I’m going to go drink a cup of tea.

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