Audiobook Review – The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane by Lisa See, Narrated by Various (4/5 stars)

Reading Level: Adult
Genre: Historical Fiction
Length: 14 hours and 7 minutes
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
Release Date: March 21, 2017
ASIN: 06WLNSH2W
Stand Alone or Series: Stand Alone Book
Source: Audiobook from Audible.com
Rating: 4/5 stars

“In their remote mountain village, Li-yan and her family align their lives around the seasons and the farming of tea. For the Akha people, ensconced in ritual and routine, life goes on as it has for generations—until a stranger appears at the village gate in a jeep, the first automobile any of the villagers has ever seen.

The stranger’s arrival marks the first entrance of the modern world in the lives of the Akha people. Slowly, Li-yan, one of the few educated girls on her mountain, begins to reject the customs that shaped her early life. When she has a baby out of wedlock—conceived with a man her parents consider a poor choice—she rejects the tradition that would compel her to give the child over to be killed, and instead leaves her, wrapped in a blanket with a tea cake tucked in its folds, near an orphanage in a nearby city.

As Li-yan comes into herself, leaving her insular village for an education, a business, and city life, her daughter, Haley, is raised in California by loving adoptive parents. Despite her privileged childhood, Haley wonders about her origins. Across the ocean Li-yan longs for her lost daughter. Over the course of years, each searches for meaning in the study of Pu’er, the tea that has shaped their family’s destiny for centuries.”

Series Info/Source: This is a stand alone book. I got this on audiobook from Audible.com.

Thoughts: I have had this on my “to be read” list for many years and finally made it a priority this year to read it. I remember it being on a list of top historical fiction books and I thought it sounded intriguing. There were parts of this book I really enjoyed and things that I enjoyed less. I listened to this on audiobook and the audiobook was incredibly well done, I would recommend listening to on audiobook if you enjoy audiobooks.

Li-yan is part of the Akha people who grow tea in a remote mountain village. Li-yan is incredibly bright and hopes to be one of the first of her village to go to secondary school and leave the village. Everything changes when she becomes pregnant with a “reject” and opts to put her daughter up for adoption rather than have her killed. Then when a stranger comes to their village in an automobile hoping to find Pu’re. Li-yan is the only person in the village who can translate for him and starts a new journey to become an expert in tea. Meanwhile her daughter, Haley, is adopted by a Californian couple and is navigating what it is like to be a Chinese adoptee in America.

A lot of this novel was very thoughtful and interesting. I loved learning about the Akha traditions and about the policies in China in the 1980s. The Akha way of life is fairly primitive and I kept checking the timeline for this story because they seemed to live so far in the past. I also really enjoyed Haley’s perspective and the discussion of issues that Chinese adoptees were dealing with in America at that time. I also enjoyed learning about the history of tea in China and in particular Pu’er.

I had some issues with both the characters and the pacing of the story. The middle of this book is very slow and I found my interest wandering. If I had been physcially reading this instead of listening to it, I would have really had to push through these parts.

I also found Li-yan’s character to be frustrating. She makes a lot of very poor decisions despite all the advice from her family and friends. For a supposed genius of a girl she is very low on wisdom and the decisions she makes put her on a much tougher path through life. I also found it frustrating that the success she does finally see doesn’t seem due to her growth as a character but to people doing favors for her, in part, because she is a beautiful young woman. I also was incredibly frustrated by the fact that nearly all her problems were solved by her marrying a rich man. The whole romance in the second half of the book seemed so contrived and solving all your problems by marrying into money felt like a cop out.

The ending felt very rushed. I would have liked a bit more to see how things played out for Li-yan and Haley. There is also some unfinished business between Li-yan and other characters in the story.

My Summary (4/5): Overall this was an intriguing look at rural life in China, a Chinese adoptee’s struggles in America, and the history of tea in China. The story gets very slow, especially mid-book, and I struggled to stay interested through part of it. Li-yan was a frustrating character to read about and was determined to make bad decisions but somehow ends up fairly successful through favors others do for her. The ending of the book felt both rushed and contrived to me. If you are intrigued by Chinese history (1980’s to 2000’s) this is an excellent read with a decent storyline. However, be prepared to deal with some slow parts and to roll your eyes a bit at Li-yan as a character.