I recently read Lisa See’s The
Island of Sea Women and enjoyed it very much, so I decided to read another
of her books. Though interesting enough,
I didn’t find that The Tea Girl of
Hummingbird Lane matched the former in terms of quality.
The narrator is Li-yan, the only daughter of an indigenous hill tribe
family living in the tea mountains of China’s Yunnan province. She and the other residents of Spring Well
Village are Akha, members of an ethnic minority living in southeastern China
and adjacent countries. As a child,
Li-yan learns the many beliefs, rituals and taboos of her culture. For example, “Boys and girls are encouraged
to do the intercourse before marriage, but a girl is forbidden to come to a
head.” When Li-yan does become pregnant,
she leaves her daughter Yan-yeh at an orphanage. That daughter is adopted by an American
couple and becomes Haley Davis. Li-yan
leaves her village, becomes a tea master, and begins a new life, but she never
forgets her daughter, just as Haley always yearns to find her biological
mother.
One of the most interesting aspects of the book is learning about the
Akha and their traditions. The number of
rituals in everyday life is almost overwhelming, and there are many rules
governing birth, life, marriage, and death.
They are many taboos for which cleansing rituals and sacrifices must be
performed. For instance, “if a husband
sees his wife give birth, he might die from it” and “Twins are the absolute
worst taboo in our culture, for only animals, demons, and spirits give birth to
litters” and accidentally touching the spirit gate that guards the village is “the
worst omen possible and strictly taboo.”
Certain types of death, like that caused by a tiger, are considered
particularly bad. The initial impression
is that the novel is set in the distant past, when it is actually a
contemporary novel; its duration is the last three decades.
There is also a great deal of information about tea. I knew virtually nothing about tea production
and had never heard of pu’er, a variety of aged, fermented tea from Yunnan, production
of which involves microbial fermentation and oxidation of tea leaves, after
they have been dried and rolled. It’s
not that the information is uninteresting, but there is so much tea arcana. Sometimes the amount of information about tea
almost overwhelms the narrative.
My interest in the middle section of the novel waned. It is this part in which Li-yan studies tea
and opens a tea business. Here there are
also glimpses of Haley’s life given through letters, reports and emails. Seeing Haley’s struggles with identity are
interesting but the author’s attempts to include the experiences and feelings
of other adoptees are superfluous. A
group therapy session including a number of Chinese girls adopted by wealthy
American families is just tedious and adds nothing to the main story.
I had difficulty with the characterization of A-ma, Li-yan’s mother. She is a medicine woman and midwife, “ranked
first among women not only in our village but on the entire mountain,” so she
actively supports the horrific treatment of a couple who become parents of
twins. But then, though there is a taboo
against a woman being present at the birth of her grandchild (“If I were to
give birth here attended by A-ma, then the men in my family would die for three
generations and the rest of the family would suffer tragedies for nine
generations”), A-ma acts as midwife when Li-yan goes into labour. And she never expresses any concern for
future generations! She is more
concerned that a man never sees a certain grove of ancient tea trees!
I also had a couple of other issues with the book. One is that there are several too-good-to-be-true
characters (Mrs. Chang, Tea Master Sun, Teacher Zhang, Mr. Huang) who are unfailingly
supportive of Li-yan. Haley too has her
fair share of supportive people. In
addition, the number of coincidences stretches credibility. Of course, the author addresses this issue by
having A-ma open the novel by stating “’No
coincidence, no story,’” introducing the idea that “every story, every
dream, every waking minute of our lives is filled with one fateful coincidence
after another.” Still . . .
Lisa See has obviously done her research and that is commendable. Not only is there information about the Akha
and tea production, she also casts light on the repercussions of China’s
one-child policy and international Chinese adoptees. Unfortunately, the narrative is often
overshadowed by the research and that makes the book a much less compelling
read.
No comments:
Post a Comment