LISA See, an American writer, is the New York Times bestselling author of Snow Flower and the Secret Fan and many other popular books. Her novel, The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane, topped the newspaper’s list of bestsellers after its publication in 2017. More than 1,500 readers have written their reviews on Amazon and Goodreads after reading the book.

It tells a story of tea farmers who plant Pu’er tea in Yunnan Province starting in the 1980s. In a remote mountain village, Li-yan and her family aligned their lives around the seasons and the farming of tea. For the Akha people, entrenched in ritual and routine, life goes on as it has for generations.

Struggling alone, Li-yan became the only person who can speak Mandarin Chinese in the village. As China’s reform and opening-up rolled out, businessmen from Hong Kong managed to reach the mountainous area of Yunnan where they discovered the traditional Pu’er tea. Li-yan seized the opportunity with the villagers and became a female entrepreneur in the tea business.

To write the epic novel, Lisa See interviewed businessmen in the U.S. who engaged in tea trade with China and paid several visits to Yunnan where she got first-hand knowledge about Pu’er tea and its trade. This is the reason the book has been seen as a biography for Pu’er tea farmers in Yunnan.

The story spans over 30 plus years, the most important period of time for the development of the Chinese tea industry.

China’s rural land contracting started in 1978. Farmers have since then acquired the management rights of the land assigned to them according to the head count of their respective households. However, the barren land of Li-yan’s hometown for tea plantation is not suitable to grow other crops, and because of the inconvenient transportation and geographical condition, planting tea was a laborious and poorly paid job that few people would choose. In contrast with the rapid changes that happened in other parts of the country, Li-yan’s village didn’t even have access to electricity in the late 1980s and the poor had no adequate food and clothing.

In the 1990s, newly-built private tea enterprises mushroomed everywhere and foreign investors were allowed to enter the tea market. Businessmen and tea raters from Hong Kong and Taiwan appeared in the tea production areas. The Pu’er tea from ancient big trees in Yunnan, because of its scarcity and uniqueness, became a hotly sought-after consumer goods. Every year, during the harvest season, tea businessmen would stay in the mountainous area to oversee the whole process from picking and processing tea leaves to packing and delivering them to many places around the world. Farmer’s income thereby increased along with their living standards.

However, the skyrocketing prices enticed dealers into stockpiling tea and waiting for a much higher price. Pu’er tea thus became a rare resource that distributors and consumers all scrambled for. Li-yan’s company overlooked the supervision of product quality and soon a large number of defective tea leaves flowed into the market. The fake tea was exposed by the media which consequently led to a plummet in tea leaf prices.

Again, villagers fell into poverty. Li-yan reiterated the code of her ancestors to the Akha people and asked them to strictly abide by the good faith, protecting the Heaven’s gift – the time-honored tea trees of Pu’er. Tea farmers were forbidden to use pesticides and they must ensure that the tea met the quality standard by drinking a cup of the newly produced tea themselves. The local Pu’er tea industry was thus saved and revived.

It is a powerful story about Pu’er tea. The book paints an unforgettable portrait of an obscure place and its people, the collision and exchange between the local traditional culture and the outside globalized world, the wide reach of a rare Chinese tea, awakening of women’s independence consciousness and self-development, and the bond between mother and daughter across distance and continents.

Source: China Today

Discussion questions:

• 1. What did you find interesting about today's article?

  2. What do you know about Pu'er tea? Have you tried Pu'er tea before? What is your favorite tea and where does it come from?

  3. Do you read for fun? What genre of books do you enjoy reading?

  4. What is a book or a writer that you would recommend others to read? Why do you recommend this book or writer?