The isolated misty mountains of SW China are home to one of the more rare and valuable teas in the world. In her book, The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane, Lisa See introduces pu’er tea, grown in Yunnan, by the Akha, a minority population who practice the old ways of living and once again learn to value their ancient trees.
The storyline follows the main character Li Yan as she emerges from her village’s restrictive superstitions into the modern world. Mentored by her teacher, she leaves the village for a coveted position at a new tea school where she will become the tea equivalent of a sommelier.
This novel twines three threads. Number one is Li Yan’s story which explores several things: an enduring mother/daughter relationship, changing friendship between two young women, the courage of one who finds her way into the new while keeping what is worthwhile from the old. Second, is the story of the tea. I had never heard of pu’er tea, or tea cakes, or vintage teas. Mild green tea bags have been my choice. But there is a whole world out there and See steeps us in it. The information is accurate, and the places are real. The third line threading through the others is the adoption of Chinese infants by wealthy Americans. We meet Haley who grows up both Chinese and American, both grateful and angry at her position. See expertly weaves the three parts to give an integrated compelling story with a satisfying ending.
Tea Girl reminded me of Song of the Lark by Willa Cather in the sense that we see the importance of mentoring. In both novels, someone in the town spots a bright child and cares enough to “interfere” and give assistance.
I was so interested in the tea that I took a field trip to Vital T Leaf in Seattle with my daughter as guide. The proprietor couldn’t have been nicer to us. She let us taste several kinds of pu’er, taught us how to use a compressed tea cake, and gave us some tips on the finer points of brewing. I was surprised at the size of the cake – about six inches in diameter. She reminded us that the tea will not go bad but, like wine, will improve with age.
I brought a cake home with me. Here, our book group is sampling it along with another pu’er we were able to find locally. The verdict was thumbs up – the tea as well as the novel.
“If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast.”
It must have been true for Ernest Hemingway because he wrote A Moveable Feast about his life in Paris forty years after he lived there. It is an idealized memory of Paris in the 20’s when he was young, healthy, optimistic and still in love.
After the Hemingway television series, we wanted to read something of his, but I didn’t want the war stories or violence of the bull fights. A Moveable Feast is not one story, but a series of vignettes, recollections of restaurants, wines, people he knew and places they went. It’s a nice homage to Paris and a lifestyle of a hundred years ago. I still think of Hemingway as a somewhat current writer, so it is a shock to think about that hundred-year part.
A fun fact I learned is that Hemingway was a Georges Simenon fan and his contemporary. I haven’t thought about Detective Commissaire Maigret for years, but I like him too. I was astonished to learn that Simenon wrote over 500 novels in his lifetime and commonly produced 60-80 pages per day. I’m impressed with a writer that manages a book a year, but he must have written more than one per month.
A much more current mystery writer is Stacey Abrams of Georgia. Yes, she is the same woman who organized the voters’ rights campaign that helped elect two Georgia Democrats to the US Senate. She has just published her first mystery under her real name. While Justice Sleeps is full of intrigue and suspense in the United States Supreme Court.
A law clerk to one of the justices discovers she has been given his power of attorney when her boss falls into a coma. There is a case; he is the swing vote; one side (with the impeachable president) will do whatever it needs to win. The judge, having anticipated what may happen, left her a set of instructions encrypted in chess moves. The case revolves around genetic manipulation and along the way we see evidence of the exciting medical possibilities but also receive warnings about misuse and terrorism. Having just lived through a pandemic year, I was receptive to the concerns of this timely book.
Although this is the first mystery published under her real name, Abrams has written eight romantic suspense novels under the pen name Selena Montgomery. I’ve read a couple and found them lighter and more relaxing than this one – but fine stories also.
One of the more thought-provoking stories I’ve read recently is narrated by a Puerto Rican parrot. He observes the humans at the Arecibo Observatory who observe the universe as they look for and send messages to intelligent life in space. Well wait a minute he says. Why are they looking so far away? We’re intelligent and we speak their language. Why aren’t they interested in our voices? “Aren’t we exactly what humans are looking for?”
“The Great Silence” by Ted Chiang is a twelve-page gem that comments on the near extinction of the rain forest parrots around the observatory. These are birds who address each other by name and, studies have shown, don’t just “parrot” words, but understand what they are saying. The feathered narrator, judging from the experience of its kind, thinks that extra-terrestrials might be wise to avoid humans.
The text of this very short story can be found free online at Electric Literature. It can also be purchased for your Kindle for 99 cents.
“The Great Silence” was recommended in a NYT opinion piece by Ezra Klein called “Even if You Think Discussing Aliens is Ridiculous, Just Hear Me Out,” dated May 13, 2021. Apparently, UFO’s, like the psychedelics I wrote about last time, are now being taken seriously. The Pentagon, CIA, and other government agencies all have information on the subject that has been consolidated into a just released report. In true political fashion, the report doesn’t assert a definite opinion, but if the CIA thinks it might be true – does that make us more or less likely to think so too?
Thanks so much for writing about another book by Lisa See…my book club here has read two of her novels, and I am ready to read another — my to read stack just gets higher!
What are the other two you read?
Just in the middle of Tent Life in Siberia and think you might be interested.
So sorry to have missed your tea tasting
We missed you too!
All of these reviews are super! I loved the idea of being “steeped” in tea information with the See book we just read. I’m interested in all of the books you wrote about, and especially am enticed by the parrot piece you discussed. I’ve thought that non-human creatures of this earth are a lot more intelligent than we give them credit for, so the communications of parrots was very intriguing to me.
Thanks for doing this blog–I love it!