The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane

By Lisa See — Historical Fiction about An Ethnic Minority in China

Photo by Alisher Sharip on Unsplash

Thank goodness Lisa See is so prolific. I never seem to run out of books to read by a favorite author (like with Barbara Kingsolver, waiting for her next one). I must have come to See late because other friend readers have already read everything she wrote. I still have a ways to go. But a few are emerging as favorites. Like this one. It was a page turner, if not for my commitment to a healthy sleep pattern, I would have never put it down.

I know so little about China. I did not know there were so many ethnic minorities. Currently, in the news, we hear about the Uygers, whom the government is accused of violating their human rights with forced labor and suppression of their religion, among other things. But, I did not know there were 56 identified ethnicities in China, the Han being the majority group. Tea Girl is about one of those minorities, the Akha people, with their traditional culture centered around tea cultivation in the mountains of the Yunnan province. As a reader, I thought I was reading about a people in a distant past, but then I checked the chapter heading and saw that the narrative begins in 1988.

I need to give you a spoiler, but it illustrates this point. This event colors the whole novel — when a couple gives birth to twins, the babies are referred to…