The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane
Lisa See
AUTHOR’S NOTE
When the novel starts, in 1988, tea leaves picked in the mountains of Yunnan sold for 4 yuan a kilo (approximately 50 cents U.S. in today’s money). The yearly income for tea farmers averaged 200 yuan (around $25 U.S.) a month.
Please note there are different spellings and pronunciations for the dark tea category known as Pu’er: Pu’erh, according to the Wades-Giles system of transliteration of Chinese devised by missionaries in the nineteenth century; Puerh in Taiwan; Pu’er in the People’s Republic of China’s pinyin system, which was officially adopted by the United Nations in 1986; and Ponay or Bonay in Cantonese.
When a son is born, Let him sleep on the bed, Clothe him with fine clothes, And give him jade to play . . .
When a daughter is born, Let her sleep on the ground, Wrap her in common wrappings, And give her broken tiles to play . . .
Book of Songs (1000–700 B.C.)
PART I
THE AKHA WAY
1988–1990
A DOG ON THE ROOF
“No coincidence, no story,” my a-ma recites, and that seems to settle everything, as it usually does, after First Brother finishes telling us about the dream he had last night. I don’t know how many times my mother has used this praising aphorism during the ten years I’ve been on this earth. I also feel as though I’ve heard versions of First Brother’s dream many times. A poor farmer carries freshly picked turnips to the market town to barter for salt. He takes a misstep and tumbles down a cliff. This could have ended in a “terrible death” far from home—the worst thing that can happen to an Akha person—but instead he lands in the camp of a wealthy salt seller. The salt seller brews tea, the two men start talking, and . . . The coincidence could have been anything: the salt seller will now marry the farmer’s daughter or the farmer’s fall protected him from being washed away in a flood. This time, the farmer was able to trade with the salt seller without having to walk all the way to the market town.
It was a good dream with no bad omens, which pleases everyone seated on the floor around the fire pit. As A-ma said, every story, every dream, every waking minute of our lives is filled with one fateful coincidence after another. People and animals and leaves and fire and rain—we whirl around each other like handfuls of dried rice kernels being tossed into the sky. A single kernel cannot change its direction. It cannot choose to fly to the right or to the left nor can it choose where it lands—balanced on a rock, and therefore salvageable, or bouncing off that same rock into the mud, becoming instantly useless and valueless. Where they alight is fate, and nothing—no thing anyway—can change their destinies.
Second Brother is next in line to tell his dream. It is ordinary. Third Brother recites his dream, which is worse than dull.
A-ba nudges me with his elbow. “Girl, tell us a dream you had last night.”
“My dream?” The request surprises me, because neither of my parents has asked this of me before. I’m just a girl. Unimportant, as I’ve been told many times. Why A-ba has chosen this day to single me out, I don’t know, but I hope to be worthy of the attention. “I was walking back to the village after picking tea. It was already dark. I could see smoke rising from household fires. The smell of the food should have made me hungry.” (I’m always hungry.) “But my stomach, eyes, arms, and legs were all happy to know I was where I was supposed to be. Our ancestral home.” I watch my family’s faces. I want to be honest, but I can’t alarm anyone with the truth.
“What else did you see?” A-ma asks. In our village, power and importance go in this order: the headman; the ruma—the spirit priest—who keeps harmony between spirits and humans; and the nima—the shaman—who has the ability to go into a trance, visit the trees God planted in the spirit world to represent each soul on earth, and then determine which incantations can be used to heal or enhance vitality. These men are followed next by all grandfathers, fathers, and males of any age. My mother is ranked first among women not only in our village but on the entire mountain. She is a midwife and so much more, treating men, women, and children as they pass through their lives. She’s also known for her ability to interpret dreams. The silver balls that decorate her headdress tremble, catching the firelight, as she waits for my response. The others bend their heads over their bowls, nervous for me.
I force myself to speak. “I dreamed of a dog.”
Everyone prickles at this revelation.
“We allow dogs to live among us for three reasons,” A-ma says reassuringly, trying to settle the family. “They are essential for sacrifices, they alert us to bad omens, and they are good to eat. What kind was yours?”
I hesitate once again. The dog in my dream stood on our roof, alert, his snout pointed upward, his tail erect. To me, he looked as though he were guarding our village, and seeing him made me feel confident that I would make it home safely. But the Akha people believe . . .
A-ma gives me a stern look. “Dogs are not human, but they live in the human world. They are not of the spirit world, but they have the gift of seeing spirits. When you hear a dog howl or bark in the night, you know he has spotted a spirit and hopefully scared him away. Now answer me, Girl,” she says, pushing her silver bracelets up her wrist. “What kind was yours?”
“The whole family was sitting outside when the dog began to bark,” I say, when I know perfectly well that dreaming of a dog on the roof means that he hasn’t done his job and that a spirit has sneaked past the protection of the village’s spirit gate and is now roaming among us. “He frightened off an evil spirit. A-poe-mi-yeh rewarded him by giving everyone in our family a chicken to eat—”
“Our supreme god gave every man and woman his or her own chicken?” First Brother scoffs.
“And all the children too! Every single person had a whole chicken—”
“That’s impossible! Meaningless! A fabrication!” First Brother looks at A-ba indignantly. “Make her stop—”
“So far I like her dream,” A-ba says. “Go on, Girl.”
The more pressure I feel to continue my story, the easier it becomes to lie. “I saw birds in a nest. The babies had just broken through their shells. The a-ma bird tapped each one gently with her beak. Tap, tap, tap.”
A moment passes as my parents and brothers ponder this addition. As A-ma searches my face, I try to keep my expression as still as a bowl of soy milk left out overnight. Finally, she nods approvingly.