THE TEA GIRL OF HUMMINGBIRD LANE by Lisa See takes us in 1988 to a remote Yunnan village where we meet
Li-yan and her family, members of a Chinese ethnic minority, the Akha. Following routines, rituals, traditions, ceremonies, superstitions and customs that have been established generations ago, Li-yan's family grow, harvest and sell tea.

Li-yan, a promising young student, aspires to passing special exams and leaving the mountain to further her education. Young love changes Li-yan's path and she looses something very dear to her.

The characters are well developed and their behaviours and actions match their characteristics, giving me the feeling of observing and feeling the emotions. Li-yan and her A-ma are my favourite characters in this novel. Their love for each other is strong and this strength helps Li-yan as she makes her way in the modern world.

At the heart of this story is the history of tea, which I found very interesting. We also see some of the changes that occur in rural Spring Well after the Cultural Revolution. The tea trade fluctuates with these changes.

Lisa See's use of letters between the doctors, and e-mail correspondence from Constance to her Mother and notes from Haley to her Mom and to her friends, and conversations and therapy discussions are very effective in showing the hurdles encountered by adopted Chinese babies and Caucasian American couples who adopt them.

"A powerful story about a family, separated by circumstances, culture, and distance, The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane paints an unforgettable portrait of a little known region and its people and celebrates the bond that connects mothers and daughters." -Quote from Goodreads

I enjoyed reading the historical fiction China Dolls by Lisa See and gave it 5 stars. This novel, The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane was thoroughly enjoyable and captivated me from beginning to end. I highly recommend it to Lisa See fans, tea drinkers, and everyone who loves a well written story. 5 shining stars.

Special thanks to Scribner, Simon & Schuster, NetGalley and Lisa See for an ARC enabling me to read and write my thoughts on this novel.

The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane by Lisa See -- When I first began this book, I didn't get into it very much. So I set it aside for a bit. But one day I returned to it and got past the part I'd started earlier. I had just stopped too soon! There was no stopping me this time! I didn't want to put it down, and it was so hard to when I was called to do something else (like go to work). This book tells the story of a minority group Chinese girl. We learn about her culture, the superstitions of her people, and tea-making from her region along with becoming involved a wonderful personal story. Part of the story relates how the girl had to give her daughter up for adoption and goes on to tell some of the daughter's story of her life in America after she was adopted by a couple located in California. While we hear of the mother's life through the years, we are also told what is going on with the daughter at that same time. I have a friend who adopted a daughter from China, and this story made me think a lot about my friend's child and more of what might be going on inside of her head and heart. My friend is reading it now since I told her about it, and she is encouraging all adults in her daughter's life to read it. When the child gets older, she will share it with her. I plan to recommend this to many others.

"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."

I picked this book up because I really enjoyed Lisa See’s Snow Flower and the Secret Fan (review), though I haven’t read anything else of hers. I was looking for a similarly engrossing read, and I was not disappointed.

Lisa See’s latest novel, The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane , tells the story of Li-yan and her life as a tea farming Akha in a remote hill tribe village in Yunnan. When she has a baby out of wedlock, she abandons her in an orphanage in the closest town both as defiance of traditional Akha practices as well as in hopes of a better life for her daughter.

The heart of this book is about tea as well as mother-daughter relationships, not only between Li-yan and her lost daughter Hayley, but also between Li-yan and her own A-ma, the village midwife. It is clearly apparent that the author did extensive research, and I learned so much about tea (such as the history of pu’er) and the culture of the Akha people (a Chinese ethnic minority group).

“Rice is to nourish,” A-ma says. “Tea is to heal. Always remember that food is medicine, and medicine is food. If you take care of the trees, the trees will take care of you.”

Even though Li-yan made mistakes, she learned from them and grow as a person. Her strength and perseverance were admirable, and even though having her daughter affected the course of her life, she eventually pulled herself up and make her own path. We are also given snippets from Hayley’s life – emails between her adoptive mother and grandmother, transcripts from doctors and therapy sessions, papers she wrote during school – that provided just enough to glean a picture of Hayley: a strong, driven, and intelligent young woman. Hayley’s story felt like flipping through a scrapbook, and I thought it was a clever way to tell her story.

The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane was well-paced for the most part, although the story slowed down slightly about two-thirds of the way through; however, it all came together for a highly satisfying ending that left me wanting to know more about these characters’ lives.

Thank you to NetGalley and Scribner for an advanced copy of this eBook in exchange for an honest review!

A deeply moving book, both emotionally and spiritually.

The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane is primarily about Li-yan, an Akha (a particular Chinese minority; China has 55 ethnic minorities) girl from a tribe on Nannuo Mountain. The mountain is now well-known for its pu’er tea, but during the beginning of the story, the people on the mountain had no idea what pu’er is, and the type of tea was itself relatively unknown. As a result, Akha people live in poverty. Their families and their spiritual traditions are all they have (that and a plot of land allotted by the Chinese government). In the beginning of the novel, Li-yan expressed doubt about her tribe’s traditions. When I first started reading, I really thought the novel was going to be about a girl who stops living by her cultural rules and moves to the west to sell her culture as a commodity. I’m so glad The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane didn’t go in that direction.

The only criticism I have about The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane is the way it ended. Throughout the entire novel, I found myself surprised by what happened next (at one point, I was whisper-screaming, “NO, NO, OH MY GOD, NO!” in my hotel room. I’m so glad I was alone), but the last few pages or so were too predictable. I suspect this happened because See wanted to quickly wrap up the loose ends, but because of the way the novel ended, it would have been nice to have experienced a little bit more of the emotional atmosphere for the two main characters. I actually would have preferred to hear about the events from Li-yan’s perspective as well as the other character. As it is, I didn’t feel like the novel had a tight ending. I actually even flipped the page after the last sentence expecting to find another chapter.

That being said, the rest of the novel is fantastic. Of the 384 pages, only the 2 of them disappointed me. Fans of Lisa See will surely enjoy her latest book. For those who haven’t yet read anything by the author, The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane, is an excellent starting point.

Now *this* is why I love to read Lisa See's books. It transports me to this other time, other location, and just immerses me into the culture I know nothing about. I'll be honest, I did not care for her last two books, but this one just takes me back to her earlier books. Where See excels, is in her storytelling of Chinese women, traditions, and history. You often hear of such tragedies that people suffer, but how they pull themselves up, and prosper. And this book is a perfect example of all of this.

The story is a life story of Li-yan, a young Ahka girl. Ahka is a hill tribe in the Yunnan area of China. The Ahka people have rough lives. They abide strictly to their rules and restrictions, superstitions, beliefs, rituals, and make their money by farming tea. You hear all about the traditions of these people, the rules imposed by the government, the one child policy. You get to hear how Li-yan thrives and goes to school, but at some point, becomes pregnant and must give her child away. The alternative is death to the child. Due to this, you hear about how Chinese children, mainly girls, are given up or abandoned as boys are preferred in China. Li-yans daughter is adopted by a wealthy family from the US and after many, many years, you learn how their lives intersect. You also learn so much about tea and how it is picked and dried, or fermented, and how it is coveted. Side note, I do know someone who adopted multiple children from China and I heard so much about the process from him. The stories he told were fascinating. But I learned so much more here, in this story. I never thought about how it would affect those children adopted by US parents and how they are treated here.

I did listen to the audio narration of this one and it had 8 narrators. Yikes! But it was tastefully done. For example, when Li-yans daughter is brought to America, she is seen by a doctor. The doctor, reading his report, is another narrator. So it was done in small amounts and not distracting, except one part. When the story is told from Li-yans perspective, the narrator is wonderful! Generally the story switched back and forth between Li-yan and her daughter.

Why only a four rating? It's a bit long, it could be trimmed down a bit. There is a lot going on, with the details of the Akha people, the details on the tea from this area, and the focus on children in China and the adoption process. When the story switched to Haley’s point of view (Li-yans daughter), I sometimes wished it would be over soon to get back to Li-yans. At one point Haley is in a therapy session with other girls just like her, and multiple narrators speak. This part was the only distracting narration. I also feel this was not really needed.

A wonderful story that I am finally glad I read. For Lisa See fans, this one is not to be missed! And it was even more special to me as I had my wonderful loose tea to drink while listening. I'm a tea junkie, so this was perfect for me.

Oh my heart. I loved this book so much. My second Lisa See and I am definitely a confirmed fan of the author. So much history and information packed into this story about tea and the Akha minority who live in the tea tree villages in China. And the mother-daughter relationships warmed my spirit and kept me speeding through the pages. Read it for a unique and charming Chinese Historical Fiction.

I gave birth to a daughter and lost her. I married the man I loved and lost him-in so many ways. I may be separated from my family, my village, and my mountain, but in my heart I'm connected to them more than ever. The suffering has brought clarity to my life.


Li-yan and her family live in the mountains of China growing and cultivating tea. Her mother is a midwife of their mountain community with many superstitions. It is the superstitions of twins, that Li-yan yearns for something more. She goes to school with a bright future and dreams, but the love she has for a village boy changes her life. They have a daughter out of wedlock but tradition and superstitions say the baby must die. With the help of her mother, she wants something more for daughter. The birth of daughter she knows anguish of giving up her daughter, courage to take her infant daughter to the city to an orphanage and sacrifice as she gives up daughter and her family so that her daughter may live.

This book captivated me from the beginning, with the stolen pancake to the search of Li-Yan's daughter, I realized how small my world really is. Much research went into this novel and with facts of the people Akha and the imagination of a author who writes beautifully, your world will become bigger and better.

I loved this one quote as a friend of Li-Yans has all daughters and in naming her daughters she shows her disappointment: Mah-caw (Go find a brother)Mah-law (go fetch a brother) and Mah-zeu (go buy a brother). The culture is interesting and the struggle of Li-Yan to overcome for something better. She was a fighter and loved well. I highly recommend.

A Special Thank You to Scriber and Netgalley for the ARC and the opportunity to post an honest review

The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane
By Lisa See

It's been a while since I read a Lisa See book. I had a digital copy of this book thanks to NetGalley, but I opted to listen to it when I had the chance. Sometimes, when there are foreign names and places, I prefer this, rather than have the voice in my head stumbling over unfamiliar words. This was a well done audio book, but not my favorite Lisa See book of the bunch I have read - Snowflower and the Secret Fan is probably still my favorite.

In any case, I did learn a lot about the ethnic minority Akha people and the tea growing region in China, and the characters were interesting and unique. There were some things that didn't jibe for me, including the fairly open-minded views about sex in the culture, but then an almost complete ignorance of how these actions relate to procreation. Despite Li-yan's age and far flung experiences, she still seemed incredibly immature even as she aged throughout the story. I found the historical aspects and the details of the tea industry fascinating, but there were other parts that were predictable and repetitive that distracted from the story.

I was reminded of the Magdalene Laundries in Ireland (I saw the movie, not sure if I would recommend it, unless you need a reason to drink) while reading this book because I had the same shocked reaction to discover that the story took place in the present day. Li-yan's village has barely seen a car in the 1990s; when an actual date was finally mentioned well into the story I was stunned — I thought I was reading about a culture from the 1800s. So yes, Lisa See once again presents a compelling topic and a wealth of information, and for that reason I look forward to the next book she has to offer.




For Goodreads:

Why I picked it — because I love Lisa See's books
Reminded me of… The Magdalene Laundries
For my full review — click here

Li-yan and Haley live very different lives. Although both are of the Akha people, they are a generation apart: Li-yan is Haley’s mother, although they have been separated since Haley was a few days old. Haley grows up in the Los Angeles area in an upper middle class home; Li-yan grew up without plumbing or electricity. All that connects them is a cake of pu-erh tea that Li-yan left with Haley at the orphanage, and has, miraculously, stayed with her.

Li-yan starts her life in the Akha people, a small group living in the mountains between Thailand and Laos and the Yunnan district of China. Even in 1995 their lives are almost Stone Age; they have no modern conveniences, still wear traditional dress, have their medical problems dealt with by a wise woman, and abide by traditional Akha laws and superstitions. Pretty much their only contact with the 20th century is when they sell the tea that they pick from their small allotments. Li-yan’s life seems to be set: as the daughter of the wise woman/midwife, she will step up to that job when her time comes.

Three things change Li-yan’s life forever. She is very good with languages and is sent on to college, where she first encounters a flush toilet. She has the misfortune of falling in love with the wrong man; she was born on a Pig Day, while San-pa is born on a Tiger Day. They are mismatched and cannot wed- but they secretly have a child together. And one day a jeep comes rattling into the village bearing a man who wants to buy their tea directly rather than going through the middleman. He knows they have special teas, from special, old trees, that will be worth a fortune on the open market. All these things combine to end up making Li-yan a woman of both China and America.

Lisa See has dealt with Chinese women coming to terms with being in America in ‘China Dolls’; in that book, it was WW 2. ‘Tea Girl’ deals with it in 1995 to the present day. The children adopted by white Americans (almost always girls) face different challenges growing up than the Chinese who arrived as adults in earlier years- easier in a lot of ways, but not knowing why they were given up and what kind of linage they might have.

The plotting is so complex in this book it can be hard to keep track of, but it all comes together in the end perfectly. The descriptions of life in the forest village bring the place to life. Li-yan is a very complex character and the others are pretty vivid, too, especially Li-yan’s mother. Five stars out of five- not surprising for a book by Lisa See!

Lisa again weaves a story that keeps you coming back for more. This is one of my favorites, since Snowflower and the Secret Fan. I love this genre she has created.

Thank you to NetGalley and Scribner for providing me with an advanced reader's copy in exchange for an honest review. This is another wonderful novel by Lisa See! It is a story filled with rich historical detail and robust character development. I thoroughly enjoyed it!

I liked this so much that I bought a copy for my mother after reading the ARC I received from Netgalley. Lisa See is a reliable writer of fascinating tales of women in China. This time she's explored Akha culture- you'll learn quite a bit about not only the Akha but also tea. The theme of separated Chinese mothers and daughters is not never but Haley and Li-yan are well drawn and the novel has so much that's unique. Recommend this not only for See fans but also for those looking for a good old fashioned story of how love can transcend time and place.

This book started off very slowly for me. I nearly gave up before I was 10% of the way done with the book (I went back to look at reviews from trusted friends to determine whether or not to keep going). Thankfully I made it over the hump and continued, because if I gave up it would have been my loss.

Lisa See once again beautifully describes the life of Li-yan, a young girl who is part of an enthnic minority in China known as the Akha. Li-yan's community makes their livlihood primarily by picking tea leaves, and See gives the reader rich descriptions of the tea industry in China.

Highly recommended for those who enjoy learning about other cultures.

4 stars

Thank you to NetGalley and Scribner for a galley of this book in exchange for an honest review.

This poignant saga spanning over two decades manages to capture the complicated lives of a mother who must give her daugher up for adoption and the daughter she gives up. Set against the backdrop of significant cultural change in China, the story is compelling and interesting. Recommended!

What a wonderful read!
The story revolves around Li-Yan, a Chinese girl adopted by American parents as a baby. It delves into so many issues and focuses on tea as a commodity to be sown and sold.
See writes with such sensitivity and detail. It is obvious that she has done extensive research into the growth and cultivation of tea but intertwines the story with such humanity. I could not put the book down and as the characters grew, so did you, as a reader.
Beautifully done!

Thank you for an opportunity to read and review this beautiful novel that I quite enjoyed reading. I would give it 4.5/5 stars. I loved the way the author incorporated the Akha culture and customs into her story and being a fan of tea I enjoyed reading and learning more about Pu'er . At it's core, I think it's a beautiful story about mothers and daughters, even if it's tied up a little too neatly towards the end I would certainly recommend it ! (already gave a copy to my mother to read!)

A lovely and fascinating novel about a girl who is a member of a Chinese ethnic minority group living in a remote village where they grow tea, and what happens to and her family as the years pass. It was a bit of a slow starter, and definitely a slow and quiet novel over all, but it was a very enjoyable read and I found the end quite moving.

I loved this book. I thought it was well researched, and a quite fascinating read on the history of tea and the culture that surrounds it. I also thought it was a wonderful ode to the bond between mother and child. Beautifully done.

I am listening to Sarah Chang playing Sibelius's Violin Concerto in D Minor and enjoying a cup of tea while writing my review this evening. I have long been a tea lover (no coffee for me!) so on that subject, this book was utterly fascinating for me, being filled with all aspects of tea harvesting and processing but also with the poetry and philosophy of tea. My favorite quote:

"In drinking the best tea, you and I are having a conversation with the wind and the rain that the ancient Daoists had above the mountain clouds. Through the tea liquor, across streams, and under moon shadows, we can understand that the separation between Man and Nature is not real."

Li-yan is a young girl as the story begins. She and her family are Akha, one of the fifty-five ethnic minorities of China, and live in a rural tea-growing area. Their culture is animistic, believing that every living thing has a spirit. They are poor and considered backward in their customs and rituals by the modern world.

"In the West, you think that the individual is supreme, but the Akha see themselves as one link in the long chain of life, adjacent to all the other links of people and cultures, all carrying a collective wave toward the beach to throw a newborn up to safety."

When Li-yan has a baby girl out of wedlock, she and her mother, the local midwife and healer, keep it secret. In their native customs, the baby must be killed but instead, Li-yan sneaks away to a larger town where she leaves the child on the doorstep of an orphanage. The baby is quickly adopted by a wealthy American family from California. The Bowens name the little girl Haley and give her many advantages for which Haley feels grateful but there remains a core of sadness inside her and a bit of anger. Who is her real mother? Why was she abandoned? Lisa See does an excellent job of helping the reader understand the inherent problems in mixed culture families. There may be great love but still many hurdles to face.

Meanwhile, Li-yan suffers through many difficulties in her own life but is offered the chance to study under a tea master and open her own shop in a larger city. There she meets a wealthy businessman and eventually they move to California but keep in close contact with their families as the tea business thrives.

Although they have a son of their own, Li-yan constantly looks for her daughter, hoping to find some trace online. For in the box with the infant, she had included an ancient cake of Pu'er tea that had been produced by her family and that could possibly help the girl trace her Chinese roots, if she was so inclined.

For on their property is an ancient grove of tea trees that have been passed down from mother to daughter for generations. Li-yan's mother has fiercely protected that hidden grove but now with modern technology it won't remain hidden for much longer. And is it possible that this tea may have special healing qualities that would benefit all mankind?

I knew how much I cared for these characters when the ending brought me to tears, something that rarely happens anymore. This was a remarkable book in so many ways--the human drama, romance, the glimpse into an unique culture, the in-depth study of tea processes. Fascinating! I have read several of Lisa See's book and this one has now been added to my favorites from this author.

Many thanks to NetGalley, the publisher and the author for the opportunity to read an arc of this wonderful new book. How lucky can a reader get?