75 pages • 2 hours read
Lisa SeeThe Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2017A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
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BetaPart 2, Chapters 4-6Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 2: “A Beautiful Flower Calls, 1994-1996”
Part 2, Chapter 4 Summary: “Shredded Out of Existence”
After giving up Yan-yeh, Li-yan suffers both physically and psychologically. Her father, noticing that she is quieter than usual, interprets it as a sign that she is ready to get married and reminds her that it’s time for her “to start contributing to the increase of people” (109).
Four months after the baby is born, Mr. Huang returns. A-ba shows him his new hand-operated rolling machine that processes tea, for which he traded his best crossbow, but Mr. Huang wants his tea processed only by hand. Disappointed, A-ba abandons the machine “under the house with the pigs and chickens” (109), and Li-yan starts working as an interpreter again. This time, the tea is much better than before, and Mr. Huang takes it to Hong Kong where it will age.
Nevertheless, he still wants to buy tea leaves from Li-yan’s grove and promises to pay her a lot of money. Li-yan is about to go pick leaves when her mother, sensing something, warns her not to do it. Li-yan assures her that she would never show him the place, but she wants to make some money for her and San-pa. Hearing the boy’s name, A-ma snaps that he will never come back. Despite the warnings, Li-yan brings Mr. Huang a basket full of leaves from the mother tree. When A-ma goes to the grove, she realizes what Li-yan has done and punishes her by saying that she “sold [her] greatest gift. [She] sold [her] honor” (110).
It has been a year since San-pa left, and Li-yan, full of despair, begins to accept that he will never come back. A-ma no longer asks her to go with her to the grove to care for the trees, her brothers and sisters-in-law ignore her, and her A-ba fails to notice what has been happening with his daughter. Li-yan can’t confide in Ci-teh because the two friends have drifted apart. Moreover, Ci-teh is about to get married to Law-ba, the boy Li-yan’s parents wanted their daughter to marry. Her sisters-in-law get pregnant at the same time, and their house fills with joy. However, Li-yan spends her “days and nights under the house with the dogs, pigs, chickens, and ducks” (111).
One day, sitting in her hiding place, she hears the first line of the love song that she and San-pa used to sing. Thinking that it’s some boy singing to a girl he likes, Li-yan covers her ears. But she feels footsteps pounding in the house, and her First Brother comes to fetch her. Once Li-yan is in the house, First Sister-in-law tells her that San-pa is back. Li-yan runs into his arms, and he asks her father to allow them to get married. Li-yan notices how forcefully San-pa speaks with her father and thinks that if he were that assertive before, they could have married and kept their daughter. A-ba agrees to their marriage, and the two run into the forest to their “special clearing” (113). There, Li-yan tells San-pa about the baby, and he apologizes for failing her. He then promises that they will go to Menghai and get Yan-yeh.
After lengthy Akha wedding rituals, Li-yan leaves her parents and goes to San-pa’s village. Everyone in the family gives her presents, and A-ma gives her most precious possession—the silver bracelet with the two dragons facing each other. She also gives her some advice and sends her messages through intermediaries, the sisters-in-law. They tell her what to do in case she wants a divorce, and Li-yan is outraged that her mother thinks she will ever want to leave San-pa. The whole village bids farewell to Li-yan, even Teacher Zhang has come, and although Li-yan knows that she should be crying, she doesn’t shed a single tear.
Once they are in Shelter Shadow Village, San-pa’s mother greets them, and then Ce-teh comes to perform the next part of the wedding ritual: She gives Li-yan her headdress, which will mark her as a married woman. Li-yan tries to “memorize every detail of her [friend’s] face, not knowing how long it will be before [she] see[s] her again” (116). Once Li-yan puts on her headdress, the ceremony is complete. After a celebration, Li-yan and San-pa leave the village. They plan to go to the village outside Chiang Rai in Thailand, but first, they head to Menghai to get their daughter.
When they enter the Social Welfare Institute, the first thing they notice is an overpowering urine odor. They see many toddlers lying on the floor. Li-yan struggles to recognize her daughter, and she reprimands herself for being a bad mother. The director of the institute, a woman named Zhou, yells at Li-yan for leaving her child behind because it’s against the law. San-pa tells her to run, but Li-yan insists on convincing the director to give her the baby. She tells the director that if she gives her their baby back, they will have “one less mouth to feed” (119), and Li-yan offers her new silver bracelet as payment. Although it’s Li-yan’s “most valuable possession” (120), she gives it to Director Zhou without hesitation. When asked if the baby has any birthmarks, Li-yan responds that she was wrapped with a tea cake. Director Zhou recognizes the baby immediately and tells Li-yan and San-pa that American parents have already adopted the child, so Yan-yeh is no longer in China. Hearing this, Li-yan faints.
After they leave the institute, San-pa and Li-yan venture on a long journey to Thailand. They stop near their first Myanmar village, and San-pa leaves Li-yan to go buy some supplies. Li-yan hears someone call her name and turns around, seeing Deh-ja, “thin and worn” (121). Li-yan is happy to see her and calls it “coincidence [...] because only [she] can understand what [she’s] feeling now” (121). Deh-ja then tells her their story: She and Ci-do went first to Thailand, but life was hard for Akha people there, so they went back to Myanmar. Deh-ja embroidered pouches and kerchiefs and traded them for eggs, and then bought Ci-do a crossbow so he could hunt. Since the Akha Law forbids them from speaking to anyone for 12 months, they could only gesture to each other. One morning seven years ago, Deh-ja woke up and Ci-do was gone, and she hasn’t heard from him since.
Although Li-yan is shocked to hear her story, Deh-ja is even more surprised when she hears what has happened to Li-yan over these years. When Li-yan asks her for advice, she only says that “all [she] can do is live” (123). The two women bid farewell, and Li-yan goes to San-pa, who has been calling her name for a while. She finds him sound asleep, and when she wakes him up, he seems very disoriented. Li-yan realizes that someone must’ve sold him opium, and she consoles herself by thinking San-pa is just trying to ease the pain of losing their daughter.
The next day, they continue their journey. At one point, San-pa stops abruptly and tells her to run. As they hide in the undergrowth, they hear a group of people marching by. When the noises subside, they peer down the trail and see a line of men dressed in military uniform, carrying baskets and machine guns. San-pa tells Li-yan that he knows these people and that she can’t go anywhere near them.
The chapter closes with a letter from a pediatrician of an intensive care unit, Roget Siegel, to his colleague, Sheldon Katz, in which he gives information about one of his patients, baby Haley Davis, adopted by Constance and Dan Davis. The letter indicates that the parents wanted to adopt a child from China “to minimize the risk of birth parents showing up and asking for their daughter back” (127). They underwent numerous examinations before the agency would allow them to adopt a baby. However, the adoption agency didn’t allow them to choose their baby and instead told them that they would get “what China feels like giving [them]” (127). The whole adoption cost them about $20,000, and they had to give $3,000 to the orphanage director “as a cash donation” (128).
When they flew to China to get their daughter, they found her severely malnourished and sick. On their flight back to Los Angeles, the baby stopped breathing, and upon landing, they took her to a hospital, where the addressee treated her. From there she transferred to the intensive care unit. The doctors diagnosed her with having parasites and accompanying infectious diseases. The doctor states that he told the adoptive parents there’s no guarantee of the child’s survival and expresses his hope that the addressee will also “fully prepare them for the worst” (128).
Part 2, Chapter 5 Summary: “Peace, Quiet, and Sanctuary”
Li-yan and San-pa have settled in one of the villages in Thailand. Each day, Li-yan goes foraging in the jungle with other women. She has found comfort in their friendship, although they remind her that she has not suffered more than any other woman in the village.
Only after three months since they left home, San-pa admits to Li-yan that he has counted on her going to college because he doesn’t have any money. Li-yan gives him her wedding cash and all the money she earned from Mr. Huang. Nevertheless, they are very poor and hardly have enough food to eat. Members of the Akha hill tribe who live in Thailand are deprived of all rights: They are not allowed citizenship; they can’t own property; and their land can be confiscated at any time. The place is also dangerous because it’s in the Golden Triangle, where locals cultivate opium. The area supplies “half the world’s heroin” (133). Li-yan now realizes that San-pa knew who those soldiers with baskets were when they first arrived, but he didn’t warn her about any of this.
When in the next few weeks San-pa stops hunting, they both go hungry, but when Li-yan asks him why he won’t get a job, he only answers by asking her either why she didn’t “perform the rite” (132) and kill the baby or why she abandoned her. San-pa accuses Li-yan of being cursed and of ruining their plans, then goes to the jungle for a few days. Li-yan consoles herself that even though her husband doesn’t have a job, “at least he doesn’t work for the drug men” (133).
Li-yan blames herself for everything that has happened. Upon San-pa’s return, she asks him why he married her. He replies that she was supposed to change his life, “to grow from the number one girl to the number one woman” (132). He then calls himself “the number one fool” (133) because now they must hide from her mistakes. Li-yan believes his words and desperately wants to have a son so that San-pa will love her again.
In the meantime, after foraging all day, she comes back to the village and together with other women changes into her wedding attire. Then they stand at the spirit gate, waiting for tourists. Foreigners usually arrive riding elephants, and the native women sell them woven pouches and sometimes embroidery. They also pose for pictures to earn money. Li-yan’s meager earnings are not enough to even buy food, but she manages to put some money away, making sure that San-pa doesn’t find it. When San-pa returns, he demands money. When he thinks that Li-yan has not given him everything, he asks her for her bracelets and headdress, threatening to beat her if she doesn’t obey.
Later at night, San-pa apologizes to Li-yan, but she begins to wonder how he spends the money she gives him. When she asks him, he confesses that he’s been trying opium “on rare occasions” (135). When the next day Li-yan asks other women in the village for advice, they warn her that San-pa might sell her to get money for opium. Li-yan realizes that she wants a divorce, yet she has nowhere to go because Akha Law forbids her from returning to her village.
That night, after San-pa angrily storms out of their hut, Li-yan has a terrible dream: Deh-ja gives birth to full-grown dogs, A-ma puts them in a bag, and then San-pa roasts them over the fire and eats them, “his mouth as greasy as the first time [she] saw him” (138). When she wakes up, she tries to interpret the dream and thinks what her A-ma would have made of it. Then she realizes that it means he’s a heroin addict, and “things can only get worse” (138).
Without saying goodbye to her friends in the village, Li-yan gathers all her belongings. San-pa has returned, and he somehow senses what she’s about to do. He tells her that she “doomed [them] by having the human reject [...], made it so [they] couldn’t fix [their] mistakes and save [their] daughter” (139). Li-yan is determined not to allow San-pa to make her feel guilty anymore, so she tells him that he has always been “a weak man, a pancake stealer” (139). A few hours later, when San-pa sneaks out of their hut, Li-yan, still wearing her wedding clothes, takes her belongings and the hidden money and packs them in her carrying basket. Although she has no food to take with her, she has her knife and hopes to forage on her way.
Having left the village, Li-yan gallops into the jungle. She is afraid that if San-pa finds her, he will have to either kill her or sell her, but she continues her journey in the direction of Yunnan, drinking water from springs and eating plants along the way. She remembers the final words her A-ma told her before she left the village and realizes that her mother has been right about San-pa from the start.
On the fourth day, Li-yan feels San-pa’s presence. She runs even faster and reprimands herself for not listening to her parents’ warnings. She hears something or someone crash through the undergrowth behind her. Li-yan realizes that she doesn’t want to end her life “with an arrow in [her] back” (141), so she leaves her hiding place and faces San-pa. He draws back the arrow and shouts, “Cat!” (141). Li-yan sees a tiger to her right, ready to pounce. San-pa’s arrow misses its target, and the animal lunges at him and bites his stomach. Having incapacitated San-pa, the tiger turns to Li-yan, and she mentally says goodbye to her daughter and tells her she loves her. But San-pa quickly takes the arrow and pierces through the tiger’s eye. The animal is dead, and Li-yan realizes that San-pa’s final action was to save her life.
The chapter ends with a letter from doctor Roger Siegel to his colleague Sheldon Katz, in which he informs him that “Haley no longer exhibits any symptoms” (143) and that she’s completely recovered. He adds that Haley is “a bright and very cheerful child” (143) whose adoptive parents take very good care of her.
Part 2, Chapter 6 Summary: “Goodbye to the Tears”
Realizing that she can’t carry out proper Akha burying rituals, Li-yan does what she can. She washes San-pa’s ripped body and performs a traditional Akha act for him “out of gratitude for his saving [her]” (145). Li-yan then drags San-pa’s body to a small depression and places the tiger’s tail on him, in order to follow an Akha ritual of placing a sacrificed dog over the corpse “to serve as a barrier” (146) for the disturbed spirit. She then covers San-pa’s body with rocks and branches to mark the place of burial so that anyone who passes by can “recite incantations [and] seek ritual cleansing” (146). Standing over the grave, Li-yan cites traditional words she heard from the ruma. She then thanks San-pa for saving her life and asks him not to follow her.
After washing herself in a nearby stream and sleeping for a few hours, Li-yan takes San-pa’s crossbow and arrow and continues her journey. On her way, she recounts her father reproaching San-pa for “trying things [he] shouldn’t” (147). She blames herself for not asking her father or San-pa himself whether he was already involved with drug-trafficking. Li-yan reconsiders San-pa’s role as a father since he seemed ready to bring not only his wife but also his newborn daughter to a place as dangerous as that Thai village. She torments herself with many questions about their relationship, yet she knows there are no answers. When Li-yan arrives in San-pa’s village, she tells his parents that their son “died a terrible death” (147) but doesn’t say anything about his addiction. Then, adhering to an Akha tradition, Li-yan takes off and burns first her marriage clothes, and then her headdress.
From San-pa’s village, Li-yan goes to her tea grove, where she falls into a deep sleep. She wakes up to a sound of her mother cooking food over a fire: A-ma heard rumors about villagers seeing Li-yan on the mountain, and she knew her daughter would go to her grove since she can’t come back to the village. Li-yan tells her mother everything that’s happened to her and asks her permission to return home, but A-ma responds that it’s “against tradition” (149). She then admits that she always knew Li-yan would come back, so she devised a plan: Teacher Zhang has secured a place for Li-yan at the trade school, and she must go there immediately. A-ma then tells her daughter that she is unique because she has “endured against all the odds with her intelligence, compassion, and perseverance” (151), addressing her for the first time using her real name, Li-yan, instead of calling her “Girl.”
They rush to the tea collection center, where Teacher Zhang is waiting to take Li-yan to Menghai, and then from there, she needs to buy a ticket to Kunming. As Li-yan bids farewell to her mother, she admits that she is scared. A-ma gives her words of encouragement and promises to send money through Teacher Zhang so that Li-yan can pay for her room and board. Li-yan arrives in Kunming in the middle of the night. She finds the trade school and hands them a letter from Teacher Zhang. Once she is in her dormitory, she swallows her tears and promises that she “won’t allow them to see [her] ache” (154).
Part 2, Chapters 4-6 Analysis
Part 2 of the novel centers around Li-yan’s marriage to San-pa. When the girl waits for San-pa to return, she feels lonely and neglected. Even her family ignores her and doesn’t notice her suffering over the loss of her baby and San-pa’s absence. Li-yan feels so worthless that she decides to spend her time in the dirtiest corner of her home, “under the house with pigs and chickens” (110), where earlier her father threw away his no longer needed rolling machine for processing tea.
Although Li-yan is jubilant about her marriage to San-pa when he returns, she is sad to leave behind her friend Ci-teh. This highlights the strong bond the two friends have. However, Li-yan is not despondent when she bids farewell to her family members, which demonstrates how much she loves San-pa and is ready to follow him, and how disconnected she is from her parents and siblings.
When Li-yan and San-pa start their quest to reclaim their baby, Li-yan’s perseverance once again becomes apparent. When San-pa is ready to turn away and run, Li-yan doesn’t give in to fear and insists on seeing her daughter. When she readily gives away her most treasured possession as a bribe to the Social Welfare Institute director, it becomes obvious that she is willing to overcome any obstacles on her way to find her baby. As her hopes of reuniting with Yan-yeh shatter, Li-yan feels devastated and distressed, yet she blames only herself, and not San-pa, for what has happened to their child.
Li-yan’s dire emotional state seems to mirror the alarming health conditions of her baby. As the letter from the pediatrician who has treated her suggests, Yan-yeh now has loving adoptive parents who have gone through a lot to bring her to their home in California. Yet the baby has suffered greatly from malnutrition and unsanitary surroundings, which brings to the fore the horrible conditions of orphanages in China.
Even though Li-yan is devastated, she tries to build a new life with San-pa. Her meeting Deh-ja can be interpreted as a warning: Deh-ja’s example demonstrates how vulnerable and unprotected Akha women are. Forced out of her village without the right to return and abandoned by her husband, Deh-ja has no prospects for a future. Yet she becomes a symbol of resilience in Li-yan’s eyes because she tells Li-yan to live on no matter what befalls her.
Once Li-yan and San-pa arrive in a Thai village and decide to settle there, Li-yan slowly begins to realize that they are in the Golden Triangle—one of the most extensive opium-producing regions in the world. The Golden Triangle is located where the borders of Thailand, Laos, and Myanmar meet, and covers an area of about 367,000 square miles. Local people who live on the territory of the Golden Triangle are often forced to grow the opium poppy and sell it to major narcotrafficking groups. Yet many local tribal people live in poverty, and Li-yan, too, doesn’t have enough money even for food. Hungry, separated from her family and neglected by her husband, Li-yan must cope with her problems alone. The only source of support that she has comes from her neighbors—fellow Akha women, who also have an unfortunate plight. Yet their companionship is what helps them battle disappointment and stay optimistic. For Li-yan, who has never been close with her sisters-in-law, this is her first experience of how uplifting female companionship can be.
When Li-yan realizes that San-pa has been earning money by working for drug dealers and that he has been taking opium as well, she makes a rational decision to leave him. She understands now that he married her out of pride because he thought their marriage (and her education) would set him apart from others. Although an Akha rule doesn’t allow her to return to her parents’ village, she leaves San-pa and ventures into the unknown, once again demonstrating her courage and strong will.
Li-yan, who has broken many Akha rules, nevertheless remains committed to the traditions of her people. Her strong rootedness into her culture becomes apparent when even in the middle of the jungle she tries to do all she can to carry out a proper burial for San-pa. And then later, when in adherence to an Akha tradition she has to burn her wedding clothes, Li-yan does so without regret, although her clothes, and especially her headdress, have been very dear to her. This burning ritual becomes a symbol of her transformation: She leaves behind her hopes for a family with San-pa and begins a new stage in her life. Once again, Yan-yeh’s miraculous physical recovery mirrors Li-yan’s unbelievable escape from the bonds of her abusive marriage. This highlights the bond that the mother and the daughter have even as they are thousands of miles apart.
When A-ma finds Li-yan in the tree grove, she is not surprised when she hears what happened. In this situation, A-ma exemplifies parental wisdom because even though she always knew that San-pa is untrustworthy, she allowed Li-yan to learn from her mistakes. Although A-ma admits that she doesn’t want her daughter to be away for four years at the trade school, she is willing to make this sacrifice for Li-yan, if she is “to have any chance at life” (150). Her decision mirrored that of Li-yan, when Li-yan sacrificed her motherhood to give her daughter a chance for a better future.
It is also symbolic that during their last conversation in Part 2, A-ma addresses Li-yan using her first name, instead of just calling her “Girl,” like everyone else in the village. This act gives Li-yan agency and signifies her personhood. Li-yan, too, feels the change involving in her, and she now sees everything around her with new eyes. What she used to perceive as worthless and unneeded, is now treasured and adored: To her, the mother tree no longer seems old and useless, but “standing with dignity” (152). When she arrives at the trade school, although scared and lonely, she is determined to do her best. She refuses to let anyone to see her weaknesses or tears, once again demonstrating her perseverance and strength of character.
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