The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane

Soon after San-pa’s departure, Li-yan reconciles with Ci-teh, and the girls promise to each other that “[their] roots will forever be entwined in friendship” (75). The routine of the village continues without interruption until a loud, frightening noise erupts from the woods. When the villagers go outside, they see a man, a boy, and a car. The man, Huang Benyu, introduces himself in Mandarin and explains that he has come from Hong Kong to buy their tea, and the little boy, Xian-rong, is his son. Li-yan, as the only person who knows Mandarin, serves as an interpreter between him and other people from the village. Because of this, Li-yan invites the man into her family’s main residence to try their tea.

Once inside, he tries tea brewed from First Brother’s tea trees and Second Brother’s pollarded tea trees but doesn’t like any of them. He then tries Third Brother’s tea from old trees, and although the Akha consider old tea trees worthless, Mr. Huang finds this tea the most acceptable. He explains that he has come to find Pu’er tea, but villagers do not understand what kind of tea this is. Mr. Huang assures them that real Pu’er is extremely rare and expensive, “a treasure” (82). He sees that the villagers don’t know what he means by this, so he decides to teach them how to re-create Pu’er. He promises to pay almost five times more for their tea than they would have earned at the tea collection center, but they must follow his instructions.

After these events, the life in Spring Well changes drastically. Villagers no longer go to the tea terraces to pick tea. Instead, they look for wild tea to harvest and ferment. Although Mr. Huang finds out about Li-yan’s tea grove and incessantly asks her about it, A-ma doesn’t allow Li-yan to give him even one leaf from their trees.

Mr. Huang and Tea Master Wu examine all baskets with tea leaves and then watch over all the processes that follow: wilting tea leaves, “killing the green” (85) over the fire, and then kneading. As a result, they have what Mr. Huang calls “maocha—raw tea made from the leaves of trees” (85). Afterward, they sort the tea and divide it into two batches: the first ferments naturally, the second artificially. Although Mr. Huang is enthusiastic about this project, the results are catastrophic, and they must destroy all experimental fermented tea.

Now that Li-yan is the only person who can enable the communication between Mr. Huang and the people in the village, her role has changed. Even though she enjoys “feeling important” (87), she has to be by Mr. Huang’s side all the time, and he keeps asking her about her tea grove. Li-yan is tempted to sell at least a few leaves because he promises her a lot of money for them, and she knows what just a few leaves from the mother tree can buy for her and San-pa. Eventually, her “yearnings for the future triumph over [her] Akha morals” (87), and while her mother is in another village, she picks a few leaves and sells them to Mr. Huang. He then takes her to a village on the other side of the mountain where she can “process the tea in private” (87).

Even after the destruction of all experimental tea from the village, Mr. Huang doesn’t give up. He promises to come back next spring, while the villagers spend the year tending to the tea trees. Before leaving, he grabs Li-yan and tells her that upon his turn, she will take him to her grove, and his touch is a like a feeling of “disease and dis-ease” (88). 

Li-yan’s plans shatter as she realizes that she has been away from school for too long and is no longer eligible to take the gaokao. After Teacher Zhang tells her that she has wasted her opportunity, Li-yan is very upset and disappointed. Soon after, she realizes that she hasn’t had her period for a while. Li-yan’s family hasn’t noticed her weight gain because of the preoccupation with tending to tea.

Instead of panicking, Li-yan goes to San-pa’s village and asks his mother about his whereabouts. However, San-pa’s mother doesn’t know. Li-yan cries the entire way home, “doubly cursed” because she is “alone and pregnant with a human reject” (90). Although Akha girls in her situation go to A-ma, Li-yan knows her mother is “the one person [she] absolutely cannot tell” (90). Yet after a few weeks, a day comes when A-ma tells Li-yan that she notices her pregnancy. A-ma consoles her daughter and offers a potion for her condition, but Li-yan is too far in her pregnancy for an abortion. A-ma then instructs Li-yan to simply marry the father, whom Li-yan reveals is the absent San-pa. A-ma warns Li-yan that if he does not return soon, the village will consider her baby a “human reject.”

Teacher Zhang comes to talk to Li-yan’s parents and tries to convince them that she can still go to trade school. But A-ma says that she “cannot bear the idea that [they] would lose [their] daughter to the outside world” (92). As Teacher Zhang leaves, Li-yan abandons all her dreams about getting an education and joining a market economy.

The months go by, but there’s no word from San-pa. A-ma helps Li-yan hide her pregnancy by making jokes that “she’s risen above the rest of us now and eats all she wants” (93). She also makes sure that Li-yan doesn’t do any laborious work and has a nutritious diet. Yet there are some Akha taboos that Li-yan can’t avoid: It’s forbidden for a woman to return to her father’s home while pregnant, and her mother may not be present during child labor. A-ma reminds Li-yan that it is a father’s responsibility to kill a newborn baby if it’s considered a human reject, but in situations like hers, when there’s no father, “it falls to the mother to remove the human reject from the world of the living” (93). As a preparation, A-ma hides away a box with a mix of rice husks and ash.

When Li-yan feels the first spasms of labor, A-ma realizes what is happening without Li-yan telling her a word. Li-yan forces herself not to cry and prepares for their plan: “[G]o to the forest [...], expel [her] human reject, and kill it before it has a chance to cry” (94). A-ma tells the rest of the family that they are going to Li-yan’s land to care for the trees and will be gone for a few days. As they leave the house, Li-yan casts one last look around the lane, hoping to see San-pa. Having realized that he is nowhere near, Li-yan is devastated, but she forces herself to look normal so that she can “come back and resume [her] life without being tainted by [her] mistakes” (95).

It is difficult for Li-yan to climb up the mountain, and their progress is slow. Once they reach the grove, Li-yan doesn’t have the strength to go to the grotto, and instead, she falls under the mother tree. Her spasms begin, and she starts to push. Soon, a baby girl appears. Seeing the baby, A-ma calls her “a little happiness” (96) and Li-yan thinks she is happy because she will not have to kill a son, but a “worthless female” (96).

Although they planned to act fast from this point on, Li-yan can’t take her eyes off her daughter. She realizes that she has a responsibility, but she can’t force herself to move. The baby cries three times, and something deep inside Li-yan “stirs, jolts, wakes” (96). A-ma, with tears falling down her face, begins to tell the story of the Akha people while Li-yan tries to breastfeed the baby. A-ma gives the baby a temporary name, Spiny-thistle. Then A-ma ties the cord and buries it under the mother tree.

After a few minutes of consideration, A-ma reminds Li-yan that if she takes the baby back to the village, either her A-ba or brothers will have to kill her, so instead, she should go to an orphanage. The nearest big town, Menghai, is about 20 kilometers away. They agree that this will be their secret because they put their reputations in the village at great risk. As Li-yan waits for her mother to return with needed supplies, she tells her daughter how much she loves her and teaches her the wisdom of Akha life. They spend the night in the grove, and in the morning, A-ma shows the baby the tea trees around and tells her that they are hers. She then names the baby Yan-yeh and gives her “the most precious gift women have in [her] line” (100)—an aged cake of tea, wrapped in rice paper. Li-yan is surprised because she thought that Akha don’t keep their tea in cakes and don’t wrap it. A-ma explains that this tea survived many changes and was passed from generation to generation in her family, and it holds “many secrets and much suffering” (101). She places the tea cake next to the baby and wraps them in a blanket.

A-ma must return to the village, so Li-yan begins to walk to Menghai. She finally arrives after two days’ travel. Li-yan doesn’t know where the orphanage is and must be careful because what she’s doing is illegal. She again tells Yan-yeh how much she loves her and looks around to see two women sweeping the street. Li-yan places the card box with her baby on the steps of a building and runs away. The women, hearing a baby crying, run to her and take her to a building with a sign that reads “Menghai Social Welfare Institute.” Li-yan follows them, hiding from view. Once she hands the baby over, Li-yan cries for a long time before beginning the trek back to her village.

The chapter closes with a report on Baby Girl #78. The SWI director writes that the baby was most likely born on November 24, 1995, and that the baby’s possessions will remain with her.