Tildes Book Club discussion - April 2026 - The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane by Lisa See
This is the fourth Tildes Book Club Discussion for 2026 and the twenty-fourth overall. We are discussing The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane by Lisa See. For May, we will discuss Pnin by Vladimir Nabokov.
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Ahhh I still haven’t read it yet but I have the ebook. Have just been too busy with work (big deadline this upcoming week) and other life things, but hopefully will have some time next weekend after things become a bit less hectic.
The past two mornings, I have awoken early (due to sleep quality issues, unfortunately).
Each morning, I made myself a cup of pu'er tea and sat down to read the book, finally finishing it this morning.
The first time I made pu'er tea, there was a smell note I didn't like despite liking the tea overall. Either I've gotten used to it with subsequent cups, or I simply can't smell it because my spring allergies are active in full force.
Consequently, sitting down with the tea and a book has been a genuinely wonder way to ease into the day, and, honestly, I could see pu'er tea being my new go-to in the morning (currently I drink a mostly decaffeinated instant coffee, but the tea tastes better). I'm not one for ritual or believing that drinking tea has history or anything, but I have to admit that doing this made me more relaxed and at peace than I normally am. Maybe there really is something more to tea?
The ending of the book caught me by surprise. I think it hit at 91 or 92% completed on my ereader, so I really thought I had more runway for a denouement. There are so many questions left unanswered! I can see why the author ended it that way though. Despite having a strong skepticism towards plot-convenient coincidences, it really was a magical ending (and the author's note specifically talks about Akha belief about coincidences, so I'm even more willing to suspend disbelief).
I got a little choked up. I do wish it had been told from Li-yan's perspective rather than Haley's, because I was so much more connected to her character, but it was a magical moment and a compelling thematic closure all on its own.
I thought the author made some really smart choices in the writing of the book. A few that come to mind:
As a white guy who's never been to China nor even heard of Akha people prior to this book, I'm not one to judge its actual authenticity. What I will say is that I thought the author did a good job of making it feel authentic to an outside observer, and also created consistency and throughlines with Akha traditions and beliefs. It felt like Akha identity was central to the novel, rather than being window dressing or a shallow plot device.
Quite coincidentally, I recently read a book that was a great complement to this one: Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China by Jung Chang. It's a nonfiction/memoir book that details three generations of women in China: the author, her mother, and her grandmother (very similar to A-ma, Li-yan, and Haley in this book). Her grandmother lived as a concubine with bound feet, and the story of her life and the lives of her daughter and great granddaughter progresses through to the Great Leap Forward, the Great Leap Forward, and beyond (it was published in 1991). It gives a lot of background information and cultural landscape that helped me to appreciate this book. It also says a lot about the role of women and their inter-generational differences, which was a focus of this book as well.
If it sounds interesting, I can recommend it, with two caveats:
As in, if you were bothered by the infanticide in the beginning of this book, then I recommend steering clear of Wild Swans.
Overall, Tea Girl wasn't a book I would have ever chosen to read on my own, but I'm really glad it got chosen because I think it's quite excellent overall. I have a few qualms with things (e.g. I thought the writing from the perspective of Li-yan was far stronger than the writing from the perspective of Haley), but overall I think it's a beautiful story covers a lot of ground and feels firmly rooted in real-world information and experiences.
I've read and loved Wild Swans. It's a great memoir in my opinion.
Did your version have the postscript about the author's research sources? I really appreciated that part. It made me feel like she truly intended to do justice to the akha culture, regardless of whether she actually succeeded 100 percent.
I thought it was fascinating to learn about ethnic groups from China that I had never heard of.
It did! Helped me appreciate the care and effort that the author put into getting things right.
I love pu'er tea. I have two cakes that I got from a local seller; they are definitely different experiences. I've also tried a couple of loose types that I didn't like as much.
How did you make yours? I tried steeping in a mug once and really didn't like it as much as using a gaiwan. I'm a tea nerd, I weigh mine, time it, and use a water boiler I can set the temperature on.
If you did use a clay vessel (an unglazed gaiwan or yixing teapot) to steep it and it was your first time using it, it's possible you were smelling something that was part of the clay, but washed out. That would definitely explain why you only got it that one time. Clay vessels also gradually take on the flavors of what is steeped in them, many folks believe they make better and better tea as they age.
Those tea cakes look fantastic!
Mine was about as average an experience as you can get. It was just steeped in a mug, from a standard tea bag, from a pre-packaged pu’er that I could find at my grocery store.
I wish I did have a really cool tea setup though! I don’t drink it enough to justify it, but that honestly might be changing. After finishing this book, I’ve been having at least a cup a day, and I just ordered some other varieties to have on hand as well.
I’ll also say that, after repeated drinks, the pu’er has really grown on me. It might replace my morning low-caffeine coffee soon. That same company also has a chocolate pu’er which was part of my order and which I’m excited to try once it arrives.
The first third of the book has some intensely tragic episodes. What are your thoughts and responses to any of these?
I was genuinely shocked and surprised by the way that twins were handled by the Akha of the time. From an anthropological lens, I can understand why a culture so protective against inbreeding and wary of survival would distrust the health of twins. It was Girl's distress and panic that made it so upsetting.
But I did not know, in that first third, where the story was going to go. I thought she'd go to school and that would be the tension, even if she did marry her I'll advised love. I didn't think he'd save her and she'd return home either.
It felt more real for that lack of predictability IMO
For anyone who liked this book and is potentially interested in reading more from the author, two of her ebooks are on sale for $3 USD right now:
This book begins with the Akha saying - no coincidence no story. What coincidences did you notice that shaped the progress of the book. Did any of them interfere with the believability of the story? What are your thoughts about them?
I'm no anthropologist, but "shibboleth" has a specific meaning arising from my birth culture (Ashkenazi Jewish) that seems apropos here. A nomadic people needs signifiers to help join scattered individuals back into a community, wherever they find themselves.
The "coincidences" are manufactured in the culture. A hundred signifiers - how you don't cross your legs around adults, the very specific ways men and women define their roles, what you do and don't eat and when, traditions around the tea harvest... They define membership in a very specific community even among other similar communities in Yunnan. This heritage serves as a bright signal and binding even across continents. The cultural story comes before the coincidences and helps create them.
What I found less compelling and believable were the recurring "love at first sight" interactions. I know they're part of a mythic tradition that's as old and widespread as humanity, that transcends cultures. It happens, but multiple times in the same book was a little repetitive and off-putting to me. I appreciated Li-Yan's consideration and distance her second time around with romance, even though Jin was smitten. It made her character much more believable and independent, and the book less of a fairy-tale.
I really enjoyed the weaving of Xian-Rong throughout the story to pull it all together at the end. At first, he's presented as a just a child, and I dismissed him as a background character. I felt quite surprised in the way he returned when LiYan's puerh tea shop was mired by controversy (tbh, I didn't guess the secret partner). So, at the end when Haley met Xian at the end I thought it was quite a cute way to tie things off.
While reading, I did think it was a bit heavy-handed that LiYan kept stumbling 'upward' so easily: into school, both training streams, and her tea shop; though those were ultimately explained. In the end, probably only Jin's extreme wealth felt eyerolly and kind of Disney princess.
Thanks for your thoughts. I also appreciated the role Xian-Rong played. It seems unlikely that Haley and her mother would ever be reunited but it makes for a fascinating story.
I think a lot of stories rely on coincidence, finding Deh-ja twice didn't jump out to me. The impact of John/Mr Huang on her life made sense to me. Even the likelihood of Haley running into Sean makes sense - she started studying the same thing his dad was interested in funding, from the same part of the US. This thing that may have helped save his life - even Ama says it was nourishing him back up - or at least that's the narrative he's been told.
Yeah it's not that weird they met.
This is a long complex book. What particularly struck you about it? What thoughts do you want to share?
I'm an unwilling believer in serendipity, the tendency for unseen attractors to pull people and events together from seemingly unlikely paths. The creative use of rare Pu'erh tea as a common thread to bind wildly disparate cultures, distant but powerful historical forces, individual lives, and the just-so stories about magical healing properties which shrouded undiscovered science made for a very rich emotional tapestry as people discovered who they could become and where they fit in that complicated world. I enjoyed it a great deal.
Serendipity is a concept that I still use and believe in, that I picked up when I was reading jung in my twenties.
It's a neat word and a cool concept.
I almost bounced off of it a few times, it isn't the typical kind of book I've been reading (I'm much more into fantasy or sci fi stories), but I did enjoy it overall now that I've finished it.
There were certainly some parts that I had to set it down and just do something else for a bit (specifically after some of the more tragic elements), but overall I am glad I did finish reading it, and will likely recommend it to some friends.
I was a little worried throughout about the level of fiction it was maybe putting onto the Akha culture, but it does seem like the author did good research (at least, according to the author notes that were at the end of my ebook copy). As I read it, I often found myself hoping that it was fiction, and not based on a true story...but I think many of the events clearly happened to some people, just maybe not all to the same person.
This was a very different emotional vibe than my more lighthearted reading recently. As I finished a different, more junk food book and sort of forgot this was what I was on now, I'd open my app and be a bit disappointed it wasn't my escapism. But I wanted to finish and did enjoy it.
I just knew it wasn't the same sort of happy story. And if I didn't read it, then maybe it didn't happen.
Although the book has male and female characters, the story focuses on the experience of women. Did you learn or notice anything based on this choice by the author to tell the story this way? What do you think about the role of women among the Akha or the role of women in China as we see it in the story?
So I've dug into "Miao" (the ethnic category that the CCP dumped most of the Chinese hill tribes into) traditional handicrafts before, looking for decorative motifs to use in jewelry making.
The silversmithing is a men's traditional craft, and the textile making, batik dyeing, and embroidery are traditionally women's crafts. Both are designated as "intangible cultural heritage" by the U.N. and the Chinese government. It's often struck me that most indigenous crafts have "masters" (i.e. men) because they produce durable metal and other goods. Textile crafts have far less longevity and don't get into museums, so women's contributions to the technologies of daily life are deprecated.
And yet the "illiterate" Miao who "don't have a written language" encode their folklore, history, religious traditions, and other critical survival information in embroidery motifs and dyed patterns. Women are the custodians of culture through this medium.
Again, I don't profess any particular scholarship in anthropology or ethnography. The book Cows, Pigs, Wars, and Witches made a deep impression on me when it came to understanding how rigid gender roles, taboos, and traditions arose in aboriginal and nomadic cultures. The traditions of the Akha make sense in the context of people fleeing constant warfare and banditry, who can't maintain fixed boundaries for agriculture or stationary housing, who have to fight for hunting territory, who travel in small, closely-related bands, and don't have lowland grass areas for keeping grazing animals. There are a thousand cruelties built into mere survival. Male children can bring in desperately needed protein from hunting; too many girls risks overconsumption of the land's carrying capacity in the absence of contraception. Incest is a real genetic risk given the relative isolation from other tribes. Twins are taboo because they're so brutally taxing to bear, often killing their mothers and being smaller and weaker than singleton births. Written text is too fragile in the tropical climate, so all knowledge has to be borne on the backs and in the heads of tribespeople. Li-yan's mother is a repository of centuries of medical knowledge that's enough to keep most people alive, while the stronger men handle law and justice.
In the broader Han Chinese tradition, fostered further by the One Child Policy, male children make more economic sense. They're more productive per head in farming, don't require dowries, and remain to serve their birth families. I don't know why the CCP exempted the non-Han ethnicities from the One Child Policy, and this is a critical detail in the book.
All of these statements are sort of "just-so" stories about how cultures evolve, but at an empirical level, they seem to explain the stories Li-Yan tells about herself and her people.
I don't have much of substance to add, but I wanted to say that your reponses have been really insightful. This one in particular offers a different take that I hadn't considered. Thank you!
What do you think about how the book shows Haley's experience as an adopted chinese girl in a white american family?
In the support group scene, the therapist uses "grateful-but-angry" as a label for the girls to reflect how they had to grapple with the dissonance between living a life of comparable privilege while also being disconnected from their roots and othered in an unfamiliar culture. Haley later comes to the conclusion that she's grateful AND angry, rather than "but," letting the two feelings co-exist.
When I read this, it pinged for me immediately as a crystallization of my own complicated relationship with my parents. I immediately searched the phrase online to see if "grateful but angry" is like, a well-established therapeutic concept or something, and was quite surprised to see that it wasn't and instead seems to be constructed for the novel.
I'm not Chinese, nor was I adopted, but I grew up as a closeted gay kid in a very conservative Christian family and culture, so the feelings of othering, of being an outsider, of wondering about your personal worth, were immediately familiar and resonant to me. My parents were "good parents" in that they were relatively wealthy, I didn't want for anything, they were present and tried to instill good values in me, and I had plenty of opportunity. For this, I genuinely am grateful.
But I'm also angry. I grew up in a culture and a family that cut me off from understanding who I was, judged me harshly, and did immeasurable harm to me.
I did struggle a lot with the dissonance between those two things when I was younger, because it felt like one should negate the other. How could I be appreciative of people that harmed me? How could I be angry about people that helped me?
I ended up settling into the "grateful and angry" coexistence that Haley did, without ever putting explicit words to it. I see it as a matter of the general complexity of life and the fact that multiple things can be true simultaneously: my parents were good parents, and my parents also hurt me. These are not mutually exclusive, nor do they negate one another.
I think I'm able to live in this now in part because my parents have "come around" for the most part. I don't think they'll ever be holding pride flags or anything, and I think they still harbor the same core beliefs about homosexuality that they always have, but I also have to acknowledge that they were and are, from their own internal belief system, acting in the ways they think were best for me at the time. They've also chosen, over time, to prioritize maintaining our relationship over their concerns for me, which I know genuinely does carry a cost for them.
Of course, I'm still hurt because this means that they'll never have a full accounting for or understanding of the ways that they did hurt me. That stings, and still does, decades later. I've mostly made peace with it not out of any conscious decision to but because it's better to tune out a constant, low-burn bother than to allow it to offset every single day. I don't think they'll ever consciously know the full extent of the "angry" part of me.
Of course, they see the flipside and think that I'm not grateful enough. They can point to days, months, YEARS of conscious, present parenting and support and want that accounted for. And they're right, that should carry some genuine weight. I'm sure they think that I'll never fully understand or appreciate how much they did do for me. The grateful and angry situation looks different depending on the perspective, and I don't think it's one that will ever fully be in balance. Instead, we've reached a sort of detente that has allowed us to rebuild different relationships than the ones we used to have.
In the novel, we don't fully get Haley's perspective over time. Instead we get glimpses here and there. The "grateful but angry" line was where I went from "hmmm, I wonder who Haley is" to "oh I know exactly who she is" in my understanding. Her situation is admittedly different than mine, but the core feeling that defines her is, I feel, nearly identical.
I didn't want to get into personal specifics on this thread, but serendipity struck again and I just had this conversation with my spouse on a long car trip. I too had the "grateful and angry" experience growing up with one immigrant parent who aggressively alienated us kids from our cultural heritage, one ASD parent who wasn't really in tune with what that meant, and neither having a clue what to do with an other-gendered, probably neurodivergent child. They weren't conventionally "good" parents, and I'll leave it at that.
But for the most part, I was materially provided for, at least one of them was unconditionally loving, and they both saw to it that I had a breadth of experience and knowledge that prepared me for adulthood better than most people. The place therapy got me to was, "they did the best they knew how to do", which I explained to my spouse is actually the end of judging them and feeling guilty and bad for it. The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane doesn't spend much time on the aftermath of Haley and Li-Yan's meeting, or the impact on her relationship with her adoptive parents, but I suspect "the best they knew how to do" covers a multitude of sins all around.
And I also got to joke with my spouse that anger at the dead (they passed some years ago) is the leading cause of self-inflicted brain damage.
I also strongly relate to grateful and angry. My parents were young and ignorant in ways that put us in danger.
Fortunately I have had time to work through my feelings and make peace with my mother and find neutral ground with my father.
I liked the author talking about (and she said Haley did but I didn't retain it) a pivot from grateful but angry to grateful but/and sad.
And I think that makes sense to me as a way of processing grief - moving from anger to sadness is a bit of a maturation, but also reflective of the ability to get distance from the parents and reprocess the emotions as an adult. (Or as an adult with time to work through the feelings)
Thanks for that insight. : )
I really did enjoy this book even if I haven't read historical (near contemporary) fiction like it in a long time!
Just finished the audiobook - almost quit a few times early on but overall glad I pushed through (which is always easier to do listening!)
I remember when I was like 5 or 6, my parents, in the Dallas/Fort Worth area, were looking to adopt and had started meeting with one of the agencies doing Chinese adoptions. In the end, it was too expensive a process and my sister and brother, who were adopted at 5 and 4, look pretty similar to the rest of our family.
I found this portion interesting generally, but also in thinking about what might have happened in my own life. Even without the monumental cross cultural and ethnic divide, I heard a lot from Haley that I’ve heard or seen from my sister over the decades.
I felt they were some of the weakest parts of the book - I get that she used real teens' experiences but I think synthesizing that made the kids feel very un-kid-like. I liked their purpose, I just didn't think they quite landed.
What are your thoughts about the portrayal of tea in the book?
It gave lots of interesting background information, both cultural and economic. It felt like See really did her homework and thoroughly researched a lot, and I think it says a lot about her skills as an author that she deftly worked that information into the story without it feeling shoehorned in or out of place.
Personally speaking, I bought a cheap box of pu'er tea bags out of mere curiosity given its significant presence in the book, but I've enjoyed it enough that I might get back into drinking tea in general (which I haven't done for, oh, a decade or so now?). I'm trying to be healthier in general as I get older, and regular tea-drinking seems like a good healthy habit to have.
I don't know anything about Pu'er or tea behind it coming in a tin or box and me enjoying what I like. Tea has never really been an experience to me and doesn't have emotional attachment.
I may genuinely try Pu'er now though I have no idea where to get something of good quality.
What are your thoughts about how the books shows changes in chinese culture?
Again with me and the serendipity - as I was reading the book, this article popped up in my mailbox. It discusses the emergence of the "kill line", the point where impoverishment by market forces and social control forces people into inescapable dire poverty, in both the U.S. and China. Part of the focus is rural displacement. China has historically avoided entrenched pockets of urban poverty by circulating undereducated rural people between temporary urban jobs and farmland. However dire the rural poverty, they could mostly survive there by their own labor. Now, the consolidation of farming under mechanized agriculture is eliminating that fallback, and long-term urban employment requires skills that rural workers aren't trained for.
The book touches on this transition, and implies that artisanal production skills are their own wealth that should be preserved.
Capricious governance is a through-line in Chinese history. From Mao's collectivization of the land to the Cultural Revolution to Deng's "It's good to be rich", the stresses on a people with deep land ties and a thousand year-old survival tradition, Teacher Zheng, and Mrs. Cheng are the emotional basis for the events in the story. When Jin talks about American citizenship as a fallback if "a dog becomes a cat", it's emblematic of how immigration and nomadism are lines of defense against intolerable levels of antagonistic change.
This is an area I don't know a lot about - but it did a good job portraying the changes once she was out of the mountains because I could track it
What did you think about the story of teacher Zhang?
I don't have a ton of thoughts, I thought it was interesting to contrast him with Jin's family in that he could never come back and that he grew from (just) bitter about that to an active participant in village life and business.
What did you think about the story of Mr. Huang whose son survived cancer after being treated in the Akha village?
I feel like it was less likely that the tea saved him and more that the care A-ma was able to provide helped him regain his appetite and thrive again after the chemo. Him not being able to provide that, rather searching for the miracle cure, because of his grief and fear makes sense. Especially given the timeframe and gendered familial expectations in Hong Kong (and elsewhere).
Seeking the miracle is so common with cancer and other unknowable/unpreventable/incurable diagnoses. It makes sense to me
What did you think about the story of the tea business?
I'm not sure I fully followed how much Li-yan was aware of or responsible for the fraud - or should have been. She obviously believes Ci-teh lies to her but it doesn't sound like she asked a lot of questions either.
It went from her shop to being run by so many others that I assume it makes sense for this tea industry in this place.
What did you think about Ci-teh?
I thought the argument between Ci-teh and Li-yan was one of the most compelling scenes in the book. It could have easily been a simple "right vs. wrong" disagreement, but See layered a lot into it to make it more complex. Li-yan is an outsider, yet wants to hold to tradition; Ci-teh is an insider, yet is embracing change. Li-yan is trying to promote honesty with nothing but a promise to back that up; Ci-teh is being dishonest but that's backed by her actually improving the material conditions of the people in the village.
It made that scene, and the dynamics of both characters, a lot more layered and interesting.
I appreciated how Li-yan was able to understand Ci-teh's motivations. She's not a monster, she does think she's helping, even as she gets rich. She really didn't maintain the friendship she thought she had though.
What did you think about how the main character meets her second husband and about their relationship?
It felt a much more traditional marriage, or maybe a much more traditional "Han-majority" marriage with family playing matchmaker. I was glad she got to find a good relationship with a man who embraced her family rather than rejecting them as tu. Him being rich felt the most fantastical but the One Child policy makes that make more sense - mom wasn't leading with how rich.
Having read the book, what further questions do you have about tea or China or the story?
I was shocked at how recent the setting and events of the book were. Growing up in the United States of America, I wasn't exposed to a lot of Chinese history other than very broad strokes, even taking AP World History. There's such a focus on Roman/Greek/"Western" history in the USA, or ancient Mesopotamian history, even in "World" history classes...there's a big lack of history covering more "modern" history of Eastern countries, so I found the story very compelling in that way.
Like I know the broad strokes of "The Great Leap Forward" and the Cultural Revolution, but only that they happened at their broad impacts...but not much more than that.
I'm not much of a tea drinker, but I appreciate the parallels to wine tasting traditions, which I do have some familiarity with. I went poking at the Bana Tea Company site linked in the book's Afterword. I'm looking forward to trying the teas recommended to go with the story.
After finishing Pnin earlier this month, I went ahead and read through Tea Girl which I previously missed.
What I really liked about this book was how real the characters felt. Every character thought differently, spoke differently, and had a different set of underlying beliefs and motivations.
The chapters that switched perspectives were written in completely different styles, and even adapted to the current maturity of the character. Both Li-yan and Haley undergo major changes, and we get to understand the world from their (sometimes limited) perspectives.
The history of the Akha people was very interesting. While my copy did not include the author's note, I understand the author did do a lot of research to tell an accurate story. And while this of course remains a work of fiction, I did start to feel like I better understood the Akha by the end.
At first, I felt the sections dedicated to explaining spirits, traditions, and superstition were a little heavy-handed. They almost seemed to delight in describing absurd rituals and beliefs, seemingly for comedic effect. However, I later realized that they provided the necessary context that the story relied on. The egg, the dog on the roof, touching the spirit gate - it all mattered in the end.
I did enjoy the idea that while spirits can be vengeful and dangerous, they are also incredibly dull and easily fooled. I remember one standout claim was that they are afraid of touching saliva as it will give them leprosy. Spirit life ain't easy, folks.
This story is full of hardship and flawed characters. A-ma may be the best example. In the beginning, I viewed her treatment of "Girl" as callous and unfair. She of course won me over, and I held nothing against her after she let Yan-yeh live (though as I type this, I guess that shouldn't be a high bar to clear).
Another flawed character was the pancake stealer, San-pa. While never being explicitly confirmed, it was suggested that he was addicted to heroin. The question I'm left with is, did his addiction only start after he and Li-yan arrived in Thailand, or was he addicted from his first trip?
I'm undecided on this one, since he did seem very sincere when he first returned. Yet he was described as being very skinny, having no money, and he clearly knew the people involved. If indeed he brought her to that place to specifically resume using the drug, I feel that casts a much darker spin on his character.
Finally, I'm not too sure what to think of the character of Ci-teh. She had completely embraced capitalism, illustrating both its benefits and faults, yet I found it difficult to connect her character as an adult with the girl we'd previously gotten to know. Did I miss something there, or was this another example of Li-yan being blinded by her own interests? Missing the forest for the tea trees, as it were. I'm not sure, but their confrontation felt strange.
Coincidence plays a huge role in this story, and unashamedly so. I think the plot contrivances might have bothered me more if they hadn't hung a lampshade on it first: "No coincidence, no story". We were told that fate was an active agent in this story from the beginning, so I guess that's only fair. I am a sucker for a happy ending, anyway.
Even excusing coincidences though, I did find it a little too convenient how every major character seemed to find riches in different ways. Whether through wildly successful tea businesses, cardboard recycling, planting coffee trees, or buying and selling real estate -- they really make it sound easy.
Many events in this novel felt like a roller coaster, with constant ups and downs: San-pa's death, getting into the college track, meeting Jin. It got to me a little bit, and I'd often come away feeling satisfied or somber based on the passages I'd last read.
The biggest downer, of course, was right at the beginning. That one was heavy. I understand that the infanticide was used to set the stage, ultimately contrasting the Akha's beliefs against future changes and developments, but wow.
I found the prose very simple in this book - with the exception of the medical dialogue - yet the stories themselves were layered and deep. The role of tradition. The triumphs and tribulations of love. Being an outsider to your own people. Contextualizing one's place as a first-generation immigrant. All of these ideas come together to tell a compelling narrative during a time of immense change in China.
While the story may be fiction, it does represent real events for millions of people. It permeates their culture and history, like a yellow thread running through a tea cake.