The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane Page 34

  You have a promising academic career ahead of you. With that comes great opportunities and responsibilities. I suspect you’ll be offended when you read this, but if I ultimately agree to be your adviser, I have a duty to know you’ll be safe—on behalf of your parents, the university, and my own peace of mind.

  Professor Annabeth Ho

  * * *

  Professor Ho,

  To answer your questions:

  1. My interest in this subject is very much tied to my upbringing. My father is an arborist. As a child, I rode along as he worked, managing orchards and visiting sick trees. He showed me how to mix compounds to feed or spray them for different needs. He once told me, “You’re learning at my side,” and I was, because I listened to every word he said and I absorbed them into my body like the trees absorbed their medicines and nutrients. Thanks to my father, I’ve had a front-row seat to observe the devastating effects of California’s drought on our trees, which, in their weakened state, have been preyed upon by pests and parasites. Unlike most Stanford students and, indeed, most scientists, I’ve witnessed the suffocating deaths of countless trees brought about by what we can only conclude is global climate change. My mother, Constance Davis, is a biologist. Perhaps you’ve heard of her? I’m a product of both of them, and that’s where my interest in my thesis topic comes from.

  2. Yes, I plan to go to Yunnan. I don’t need outside funding. My family will provide it. I’ll take my first trip over spring break, which corresponds to Yunnan’s tea-picking season. I agree that joining another study would be opportune. Tufts Institute of the Environment in cooperation with the Ethnobiology Department of the Chinese Ministry of Education and sponsored by the National Science Foundation is currently doing a multidisciplinary study (the team includes a chemical ecologist, cultural anthropologist, soil and crop scientist, agricultural economist, and others) on the effects of extreme climate events on terrace tea and wild tea crop yields in Yunnan. I’ve been in contact with the study’s leader, Dr. Joan Barry, and she’s agreed to my participation in the project—much of which I can do on my laptop in my dorm room and by analyzing tea samples in the lab here on campus. The current plan is for me to travel in the tea mountains for a week by myself to enlist informants and gather tea samples for my project. Then I’ll join the Tufts team for the second week. Dr. Barry says she looks forward to seeing the results of my research.

  3. Yes, I see this as a multiyear study, which I hope to pursue whether I’m accepted into Stanford’s graduate program or I go to one of the East Coast universities already recruiting me. For now, though, I’d like to begin my research in the way I outlined in my earlier e-mail.

  4. As for your question about the health benefits of tea, let me just say that there are currently two hundred studies being undertaken around the world addressing this topic. Believe me, I’m going into this with my eyes wide open and with all the skepticism and rigor Western science should bring to the table.

  5. Point One: The fact that I asked you to be my adviser has nothing to do with your race. I thought—and continue to believe—that your work on the effects of air particulates on children living in the Yangtze delta was a good match. Point Two: I appreciate your suggestion that I incorporate Chinese poetry and philosophy into my thesis. In fact, I’ve already done a little research and think it might be more inclusive—and provocative—to include some popular American thoughts about tea as well. For example, a recent issue of Bon Appétit devoted space—I believe for the first time—to tea. In it, American culinary pioneer Alice Waters credited Pu’er for helping to lower her cholesterol by 100 points and get her “off coffee.” It’s not poetry, obviously, but if someone like Alice Waters says something like that so publicly, especially if it’s in a food magazine and not a scientific journal, won’t that drive interest in tea in general and Pu’er in particular? And won’t that, in turn, make the issue of the effects of climate change on tea trees even more pressing?

  In closing, I need to address your concerns about my traveling companion. While no one can fully understand another person’s motives, I doubt he has any romantic interest in me. (I assume that’s what you were suggesting. If not, I’m hugely embarrassed.) He’s a tea nerd. I hadn’t known such a thing existed, but it does. I feel lucky to have connected with an expert in the field who can address so many of your logistical concerns.

  I hope you will still consider being my adviser.

  Sincerely,

  Haley Davis

  * * *

  Dear Haley,

  Of course, I know your mother. Everyone in our field knows your mother for the quality and importance of her work. We’ve been attempting to recruit her for our Biology Department for years. She’s always said she didn’t want to uproot her family. I should have put two and two together. It’s my own ignorance that didn’t allow me to match your name and your talents to her face. I apologize.

  I apologize as well for my part in the other misunderstanding. I will gladly be your adviser. Come to my office hours next Tuesday for further discussion. Among other things, I’d like to know, given your last e-mail, if you’ll be looking at tea in general or just this Pu’er that you mentioned. I see some real benefits in narrowing from a panoramic and encyclopedic view to going in depth on one varietal.

  Until Tuesday,

  Professor Annabeth Ho

  * * *

  Dear Professor Ho,

  Yay! My mother will be so excited when I tell her. I am very much looking forward to working with you.

  Haley

  AS UNCONTROLLABLE AS THE WIND

  “Are you stalking me?” I ask. “No matter where I go, there you are.”

  “Ah, Tina.” Mr. Huang gives me an ingratiating smile. “Maybe we’re meant to know each other. Have you ever thought about that?”

  No.

  “I call you by your American name,” he says. “When will you start calling me by mine? John.”

  Never.

  We’re on the terrace of the teahouse in the Chinese scholar’s garden at the Huntington Library. It’s early February, and we’re here to celebrate the forthcoming Year of the Monkey and to help raise funds for the final phase of the Chinese garden. Heaters warm the terrace, Chinese lanterns hanging in trees along the lakeside cast a ruby glow, champagne and appetizers are passed. Anyone who’s anyone in the Chinese American community in Los Angeles is here: East West Bank’s Dominic Ng and his wife; Panda Express’s Peggy and Andrew Cherng; and the toy mogul Woo brothers. Some speak in Mandarin, but most use English so as not to be rude to the old-money Pasadena couples who’ve been supporting the Huntington for decades.

  “Is Xian-rong enjoying his new home?” I inquire, trying to be polite. Jin’s company sold Mr. Huang and his son houses—mansions, really—in San Marino and Pasadena, respectively.

  He shrugs. “It’s good to have him close by. The economy is slowing in China. We can make more money with my cranes here. You’ll be seeing us much more now.”

  I smile, but he’s known me so long that he has to realize it’s not sincere.

  “I’ll be going to the tea mountains in the spring for tea picking,” he goes on, unfazed. “May I visit?”

  “You’re always welcome in Spring Well Village,” I answer. “I’ll never forget how you and Xian-rong helped me when the bubble burst.”

  “This year, will you take me to your hidden—”

  “I’m not too old to be still learning new English words. Incorrigible. Do you know that one?”

  He drops all pretense of casual conversation. “Have you heard that the Pu’er Tea College now has a study base with a GPS system that can locate every tea tree over a thousand years old on Yunnan’s twenty-six tea mountains?”

  A knot instantly forms in my stomach. I swallow to push it down.

  “They want to protect China’s most precious gifts,” he continues. “Once recorded, they can watch to make sure no one cuts down a tree to pick its leaves easily or carve graffiti in its bark. From hi
gh in the sky, they can see through mists, fog, and clouds to the outlines of mountains, boulders, and hollows.”

  Attempting to keep my expression as bland as possible, I let my eyes float over the crowd. Where is Jin? I need him.

  “The Pu’er Tea College is not the only institution or person to have GPS.” Mr. Huang intrudes on my silence. “Did you know I have access to it? Do you know what that means? For twenty-one years I’ve been searching—”

  “No!” Unable to stop myself, I turn away. Moving through the mingling couples, I escape onto one of the little paths that wends around the lake.

  “Li-yan, wait!” he calls, switching to my Akha name.

  I try to compose myself.

  “There’s so much you don’t know,” he says when he reaches me.

  “I don’t want to hear it.”

  “You’ve never trusted me, but you need to start now.”

  “Why? So you can wheedle and pry your way into my life?”

  “That’s entirely unfair,” he responds, heated and defensive. “Somehow you blame me for things that happened to you when you were young, but I don’t know what they were or what I did that was so terrible. Couldn’t you think of it another way? Maybe my visits to Nannuo Mountain helped pave the way for your success—”

  “You taught us about Pu’er, but you’ve had nothing to do with what I’ve made of my life.”

  “Really? Then how do you think you got into the tea college? You know that Tea Master Sun and I are acquainted, but did you know the two of us have been friends for a long time? Why else would he accept you into two programs, when not a single other person from a hill tribe was admitted to either?”

  “Then I thank you for changing my life,” I say.

  I start to leave, but he gently takes hold of my arm. “Have you ever wondered who your secret partner was in the Midnight Blossom Teashop?”

  “Green Jade . . .” A hand goes to my mouth in surprise. “Was that you?”

  “One of my companies, yes. I was your partner.” He pauses to let the unbelievable news sink in. “And I came here tonight to warn you about the study base’s plans.”

  “I don’t understand. Why would you do any of those things?”

  “I needed to repay your family.” His voice fades and he gazes across the lake. The red reflections from the lanterns ripple across the surface. I wait. Finally, he goes on. “Your mother saved my son’s life.”

  “What are you talking about?” My question comes out sharper than I intended, but I can’t help feeling he’s trying to put something over on me.

  “You’ve never asked about my wife,” he says.

  This is so. How odd.

  He pulls out his wallet and shows me a photo of a pretty young woman holding a baby in her arms.

  “I loved her very much,” he says. “She got breast cancer right after Xian-rong was born. She didn’t live to see his first birthday.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “To lose a wife is terrible, and I’ll always miss her. But nothing prepared me for the anguish I felt when Xian-rong was diagnosed with bone cancer. He was three.”

  I’m speechless, trying to reconcile this information with my memories of our first encounter. The sound of the old PLA jeep grinding its way through the forest, the initial unsettling sight of Mr. Huang in his strange clothes, and the little bald boy in what I now know was a Bart Simpson T-shirt, skipping up the path from the spirit gate to the main part of the village as if he knew exactly where he was going. Everything about those moments was alien and frightening. How was I to know Xian-rong was sick?

  “He’d had chemo and radiation therapies,” Mr. Huang says, addressing my doubt. “We’d tried alternative treatments. I won’t go into every detail, but some friends in Hong Kong told me about the medicinal qualities of Pu’er. I had to find the purest and most potent. Once I got to the tea mountains, I asked everywhere for the name of the best village doctor—”

  “But you came to us because you were a connoisseur—”

  “I wasn’t a connoisseur, but I had a dying son and had to become one very quickly.”

  “You said you were a collector,” I insist. “You came to make Pu’er. We made it. You took it away . . .”

  “I made Pu’er, and I took it away, true. I sold most of it, which is not what a collector would do.”

  Were we so gullible that we believed everything he said back then? Of course, we were. Even so, I must look like I need more convincing.

  “How can I best prove it to you? Ah, so easy. I could have been the one to make Truly Simple Elegant. Mr. Lü and I each had what we needed to make an iconic tea, but I wasn’t on Nannuo for that. I came to Spring Well for your mother. She was the person everyone mentioned. If there was a cure for my son, then she would have it.”

  I replay those weeks in my mind. Xian-rong’s exuberance never lasted very long, and he must have been bald from his treatments. And despite A-ma’s continued distrust of Mr. Huang, she’d always shown a particular fondness for the boy, letting him stay with her in the women’s side of the house in the afternoons when he was tired. And there was Mr. Huang’s behavior, which at the time had seemed so strange: how easy he was to bargain with, how he’d said, “I need this,” how much he was willing to pay for the mother tree’s leaves during his second visit. Through it all, I’d been so absorbed with thoughts of San-pa—and uninformed about the outside world—that I hadn’t searched beyond the surface of his words.

  “Your mother’s tea healed my boy.”

  “You don’t truly believe that.”

  “But I do believe it, and I want to prove it. I’ve been funding Pu’er studies around the world, and we’re discovering all kinds of benefits. But there’s something about the tea from your grove that’s different.”

  “So you’re asking for my tea for your personal gain?”

  “No!” He puffs his chest, insulted. “Don’t you see, Li-yan? We have to protect the trees. If I can find your grove, how long before the study base or some unscrupulous dealer does? The camphor trees won’t hide your special trees forever.”

  Which tells me he really does know the location of the grove. Maybe he’s been there already . . .

  “The two special tea cakes we made . . .” His voice drifts off again. “They had yellow threads which grew and spread—”

  “I remember you telling me this before. A-ma always relied on those for her toughest cases.” And they’re in Yan-yeh’s tea cake . . .

  “Those threads are what’s so powerful. For years, I’ve scoured the mountains, looking for other sources, but haven’t found one. They’re only in your grove, and they’re what saved Xian-rong when he had a recurrence in 2007.”

  I remember Mr. Huang coming to my shop in the tea market and telling me that he’d been to my village and wondering why no one, not even A-ma, had mentioned it.

  “And A-ma treated him again?” I ask.

  He nods. “I told Xian-rong the tea would help settle his stomach postchemo. And, since he loved your mom and Nannuo Mountain, he never asked questions and was content to obey. He’s been cancer-free ever since.”

  “Then let it go and be grateful.”

  “Li-yan,” he pleads, “my son has recovered twice from cancer. My wife died from it. Did they have a genetic predisposition or was it just bad luck? How can I know what will happen to my grandchildren and great-grandchildren?”

  “Xian-rong isn’t even married yet,” I respond, trying for a light tone, “and you never like the girls he goes out with anyway.”

  But this isn’t the time for levity.

  “One day he’ll find the right girl.” Mr. Huang leans in. “Then what? You Recite the Lineage? What about my lineage? What about Xian-rong’s? You’ve known him for twenty-one years. What if he or his son or daughter gets sick? Your mother might be gone. You and I might not be here either. There would be no way to protect my family’s security and longevity. You’ve never trusted me, but you should start now. I’m a
man who loves his son very deeply. What would you do for your son?”

  * * *

  I don’t tell Jin about my conversation with Mr. Huang. I don’t call A-ma to discuss what he said either. I hold all the information inside me, trying to process it. Out of everything he said, one question lingers: What would you do for your son? I find myself watching Paul when he draws his bow across his violin strings, when he kicks the ball during soccer practice, when he wakes screaming in the night. We Akha think so much about our ancestors and the spirit world in which they reside, but our sons and daughters in the world of the living prolong our lines in the direction of the future. They will be the next ancestors. They should be protected, but at what cost? By the time Paul and I leave for China the following month, I know what must happen. I hope my conviction will be enough to sway A-ma.

  On our way to Spring Well, we make a quick stop at the Social Welfare Institute to deliver clothes, toys, books, and other necessities. Paul always likes these visits, and even though he’s only eight he likes to make things for the kids—like puppets made from lunch bags—but this time he’d asked if we could bring three laptops. “They could play games. They could even learn to read a little. When they’re older, if they aren’t adopted, they could do their homework . . . Mom, please!” Before we left home, I’d told Jin that our son is destined for a great university, because he’s already building his community service record. My husband had laughed and kissed the top of my head.

  And then it’s on to Nannuo Mountain. Tea-picking season is always so busy that A-ma and I usually don’t visit my grove until I’m just about to return home. Not this time. Directly upon our arrival in Spring Well, I ask her to come with me to my hidden grove. My a-ma has reached seventy-eight years on this earth. She’s lived on Nannuo Mountain her entire life—breathing clean air, eating fresh food, and walking these mountains to care for tea trees and people alike. She’s strong, and I lag behind as she strides up mountain trails that grow progressively narrow until the last one seems to disappear. She waits for me at the boulder, and together we shimmy around it.