The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane Page 6

  “Peasants stayed poor,” he drones. “They often starved to death. Life was not fair. But after Chairman Mao united the country in . . . What year?”

  “Nineteen-forty-nine,” we chant.

  “All land was confiscated and redistributed to the masses.”

  I know this is so, because my a-ba’s family was given a little land—not to own, all land belongs to the government, but to be responsible for. A-ma’s family, who lived on the other side of Nannuo Mountain, also received land. They didn’t tell anyone about the hidden grove. If someone had found out, they would have been classified as landlords. Luckily, the grove was, as I now know, so utterly hard to find that it had escaped detection by surveyors or other farmers. It wasn’t on anyone’s map, so it wasn’t confiscated by a landlord, redistributed by Chairman Mao, taken back by him during the Great Leap Forward, or impacted by what Teacher Zhang is talking about now.

  “Nine years ago, in a deal that was part of a nationwide program to return property to original owners, old landlord families in this area were once again allowed to work their ancestral lands. But they, and all Chinese, still had no rights to ownership. Neither do people like you.”

  Finally, he arrives at the most important part of his lesson: the Thirty Years No Change policy, which singled out the ethnic minorities in the tea mountains of Yunnan. I lean forward and listen hard. This policy affects each of us, and yet no matter how many times I hear it explained, I’m still confused. Once Teacher Zhang said it was supposed to be like that: “Confusing on purpose.”

  “Six years ago, the Thirty Years No Change policy divided the land yet again,” he begins. “Each person—from infant to those in their nineties—received an allotment. The divisions were supposed to be fair, with each family receiving some land in the sun and some in the shade, some on steep slopes and some that could easily be cared for, some rocky and some with soil rich with nutrients, some with tea trees and some with terraced rice paddies.” The stretch of his mouth sags as wilted and forlorn as a length of vine cut from its mother plant. “Are there problems with this policy?”

  Yes, but no one would be foolish enough to say them out loud. No baby born since the policy was given to us has received an allotment of land. When an elder dies, the land is either kept in the family or returned to the village. When a woman marries out, she often loses her land to her father or a brother, but when she goes to her husband’s village, she isn’t given new land.

  “Think, children, think. What repercussions has this policy had on your families?”

  Still no one raises a hand. Teacher Zhang begins calling on different boys and girls. The stories are more or less the same. Once the land allotments were assigned to a family—maybe two people, maybe thirty people—the a-ba took charge and determined who would receive the land in the sun, the rocky hillside, and so on. My a-ba kept the best land for himself. He slashed and burned his tea trees to raise ducks, pigs, and chickens. The ducks died, he could never afford a pig, and we used our chickens for ceremonial purposes faster than they could lay eggs. He then tried to grow market crops. The monsoon season guarantees that the rice will turn out well, and we would starve if not for it, but otherwise A-ba does not have the gift for growing vegetables.

  As the second most valuable person in the family, First Brother was given the second-best land. Like A-ba, he burned his tea trees. In their place, he planted tea bushes on terraces. Second Brother received the third-best land. He pollarded his tea trees—the tops were hacked off so that new and shorter branches would grow—making the leaves easier to pick and supposedly more profitable. So far that hasn’t turned out to be so, because these plants are susceptible to diseases and parasites and require large amounts of fertilizer and pesticides. Third Brother received land immediately around our house and close to the village. He’s the owner of many tea trees—two to four hundred years old. Since the tea collection center won’t buy those leaves, Third Brother has done nothing to his groves. “Too much work,” he says. This tea costs us nothing, so that’s what we drink.

  A-ba assigned A-ma’s hidden land—with its worthless bride-price of ancient tea trees—to me. I was four at the time. Even if I’d been the age I am now, what could I have done to change the result? Nothing, because I’m only a daughter. I’ll be thirty-four when the Thirty Years No Change policy ends. No one knows what will happen then. But one thing is certain . . .

  “Everything always changes,” Teacher Zhang says. “Now we’ve entered a new era. Paramount Leader Deng Xiaoping has given us a slogan to follow. To get rich is glorious . . .”

  As he sometimes does when the last minutes before the lunch break near, Teacher Zhang points to the wrinkled posters of Beijing tacked to the bamboo walls. “If you study hard, maybe you could visit our capital one day.” His arm drops limp as he stares at the images: thousands of people riding bicycles, everyone dressed alike. He looks homesick, but I would die if I had to live in a place like that. He sighs, blinks a few times, and then asks in the saddest voice, “Does anyone have any questions?”

  In return, he gets only requests.

  “Tell us about telephones.”

  “Tell us about television again.”

  “And movies! Tell us about movies.”

  A small smile lifts the corners of Teacher Zhang’s mouth. “I’ll have to use Mandarin characters,” he says, turning to the blackboard. “The most important character to learn is dian. Who can tell me what it means?”

  “Lightning!” The students sing out in perfect chorus.

  “We can also call that electricity,” he says.

  “Electricity,” we repeat as one, echoing his pronunciation as closely as possible.

  “If I add the character—”

  “Speak,” we practically shout as he writes the character next to dian.

  “I get—”

  “Telephone!”

  “If I add the characters for vision and sowing seeds to dian, I get—”

  “Television!”

  “And if I write shadow next to dian, I get—”

  “Electric shadow! Movie!”

  We don’t have electricity, and we don’t have telephones, television, or movies either. Until today I really and truly didn’t believe they might actually exist. They had only been exciting things to hear about and much more fun than doing our math tables or identifying the countries around us that none of us have ever seen, will ever see, or can even imagine. Today, though, I understand just how sneaky Teacher Zhang is. He’s made us beg him to teach us Mandarin. Or maybe he’s tricky, which is why he was sent here in the first place and will never be allowed to return home. I hope so anyway, because I never want him to leave. I need him.

  I run outside with the other kids, but I watch for Teacher Zhang to emerge from the classroom with his usual jar filled with hot water. Once he’s settled on his own bamboo platform to eat his lunch, I walk over to him, reach into my pocket, and hand him a pinch of tea processed from last-grade leaves.

  “Help me, Teacher Zhang. Help me.”

  * * *

  Naturally, A-ba and my brothers are against extra schooling for me. “What husband wants a wife who thinks she’s smarter than he is?” A-ba asks Teacher Zhang when he presents the idea, while A-ma looks at him as though he has plague pustules.

  “A-ba, I will learn wife and mother responsibilities,” I volunteer. “I’ll continue to be a good daughter and help with tea picking. I won’t miss a single chore or duty. If I do—even if it happens for the length of a swallow’s blink—I promise I’ll put away my books forever.”

  “No.”

  A half cycle later, Teacher Zhang goes around my father’s back and invites the headman, ruma, and nima to our house to consult.

  “The only education the girl needs is from her mother,” the headman says. “A time will come when we will require a new midwife.”

  “I will learn those duties,” I pledge. And I will too, because I don’t see a way for my plan to work other
wise. That said, I won’t meet A-ma’s eyes for fear she’ll see the truth in my heart. I can never be a midwife.

  The headman, ruma, and nima glance at my a-ba to get his reaction.

  “I have already said no,” he says.

  The village leaders seem willing to accept a father’s decision about his daughter, but then Teacher Zhang starts rudely picking at the wound of inferiority we all carry.

  “I’ve lived many years among you,” he says, “and I can tell you this. Your people have no regard for education. You would rather let your children gather food, hunt, and nap than study. You boast of the Akha having one mind, but that mind is shy, closed, and suspicious. In this way, you ethnic minorities are all alike.”

  Embarrassed, the headman decides Teacher Zhang has hit upon a good idea: “She will bring honor to our village and inspire other children.”

  But the others remain silent in their opposition.

  “To you, this meager girl is just another mouth to feed until she marries out,” Teacher Zhang persists. “But if you let her continue her studies, she may help you one day.” He mulls over the possibilities. “What if the government decides you need a village cadre as you did during the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution? Those were dark days, were they not? Wouldn’t you prefer to have someone from Spring Well speak on your behalf?”

  When the nima comes out of his trance, he says, “Let her go to second-level school, and later third-level school, if she qualifies. She’ll become fluent in Mandarin. In later years, she’ll be able to communicate with Han majority people.”

  “And, if they decide we need a village cadre to watch over us again, we’ll present her as our candidate,” the ruma adds, also agreeing with Teacher Zhang.

  Sun and Moon! So I can take the blame and accept all the heat if the people of Spring Well Village don’t obey the government’s orders? Or did the ruma go along with the plan because I would be easily manipulated and controlled as a girl? Even A-ba saw that those men were looking out more for their own welfare than for mine. “No,” he said, which was remarkable given that the headman, ruma, and nima were united. In the end, though, their interests were more important than rules for girls, and A-ba was only one man with too many powers against him. Teacher Zhang and I had won.

  * * *

  For the next two years, I work very hard: doing home chores, picking tea, following and learning from A-ma, attending school, and working privately with Teacher Zhang to improve my math skills. I take and pass the test that will allow me to go to second-level school. The headman, ruma, and nima call the village together to announce the news and present A-ba with a pouch of tobacco as praise for being such a farsighted father. Teacher Zhang gives me a copy of one of Lu Xun’s books, “so you’ll know our greatest writer.”

  Months later, when the new session opens, I walk alone to the second-level school. I’m very scared. I’m twelve years old and still quite small. Entering the school yard, I hear many different languages—Dai, Yi, Lahu, Hani, Naxi, and Mandarin. I don’t catch a single word of Ahka. Only when I get into my classroom and we’re assigned seats—something I’ve never experienced before—and I’m put in the back corner do I discover another Ahka. I recognize him right away: San-pa, the pancake stealer.

  PART II

  A BEAUTIFUL FLOWER CALLS

  1994–1996

  A BLIND KITTEN

  Each year in the month of Chor Law Bar Lar—which is similar to what the Han majority calls the eighth lunar month and what I now know the rest of the world calls September—we have the Swing Festival. The four-day celebration always begins on Buffalo Day, exactly nine full cycles—one hundred and eight days—after the ruma has told the people of his particular village to plant their rice. The festival has yet another purpose beyond a sacred thanksgiving, and that is for boys and girls of marriageable age to meet. For this reason, some people call the Swing Festival the Women’s New Year, because it can be the beginning of life for us. This year I turned sixteen, and now the women in my family have gathered to help me put on my headdress for the first time.

  “When you reached twelve years, you discarded your child’s cap so you might wear a simple scarf,” A-ma begins. “Two years later, you tied a beaded sash around your waist, which hung down and kept your skirt from flying up.”

  She motions to Third Sister-in-law, who holds up my headdress. It’s decorated with dyed chicken feathers, monkey fur edging, colorful woolen pom-poms, and silver coins, balls, and pendants that A-ma and others have given me over the years.

  “The effort you’ve put into this will show your future husband and his family your meticulousness, willingness to do hard work, and knowledge of the Akha’s path of migration through embroidered symbols,” Third Sister-in-law says, proud of her teaching. “It will also announce your artistic sensibilities, which you can pass on in the unfortunate event that one day you give birth to a daughter.”

  She hands the headdress to A-ma, who gently ties it over my hair. Five kilos was a lot lighter in my lap than it is on my head, and my neck wobbles a bit.

  “You have now received the gift of womanhood,” A-ma says.

  The sisters-in-law smile, and my nieces stare at me enviously. When I look in the mirror, I see a thin, but pretty, girl. My eyes are wide and shaped like leaves. My nose comes to a delicate point, unlike the mashed noses of Han majority women. My cheeks are tawny from the sun and mountain air. I’m most definitely ready for marriage. I wish I could run outside this instant to see if the boy I secretly love has come, but the ceremony isn’t over.

  “As promised,” A-ma continues, “you’ve never missed a single chore or duty. You thresh rice and grind it under the house every morning. You haul water. You work as hard as your brothers during tea-picking season . . .”

  Her voice trails off. This is to make me remember all the time we’ve spent on my useless land, tending to the mother and sister trees. Instead I think about all the classwork I completed aided by Teacher Zhang’s ongoing tutoring and how I learned never to talk to my family about what I’d been taught. I made that mistake early on when I told A-ma and A-ba that a lunar eclipse was not caused by a spirit dog eating the moon and that Burma was now called Myanmar.

  “You can now make potions,” First Sister-in-law says. “You gave my daughter tea leaves to place over her pimples so they’d disappear quickly.”

  “And you gave them to me to reduce the circles under my eyes,” Second Sister-in-law adds. “My husband benefited from the wild tobacco you told him to chew to help with his toothaches, and now he uses the gooey residue left in his pipe to kill leeches just as you recommended.”

  “You know the proper opium dosages to give to the dying,” Third Sister-in-law says in awe. “And you’ve even learned how to extract and then boil the stomach contents of a porcupine to give to someone who is unable to stop vomiting.”

  A-ma holds up a hand to silence the others. “Most important, you have learned the skill of delivering babies.”

  It’s true. When that mother in Bamboo Forest Village gave birth to a stillborn, I made sure that the tragedy was buried in the forest. The next year, she had a second stillborn. Tradition says that this child is the first baby returning. I instructed the father to throw the corpse in water to break the cycle of returning. The next year, the couple had a perfect baby boy. In other villages, I saw three human rejects come into and leave the world. One had a head double the normal size; one was too small; and the last had a particular look that A-ma said marked him as a future idiot.

  “Never once have you faltered,” A-ma says.

  But what changes A-ma and I have seen since the birth of Ci-do and Deh-ja’s human rejects! I now understand that I live in an area so remote that we didn’t hear about the One Child policy for almost fifteen years. When the Family Planning Office finally opened at the tea collection center, it was only for Han majority workers, because this policy doesn’t affect any ethnic minority anywhere in the country. However, if
a Han woman gets pregnant with a second child, she’ll be made to abort it and pay a fine. If she continues her reckless behavior, she’ll be sterilized. But this talk of midwifery isn’t just to praise me. It’s the prelude to the warning every girl who puts on her headdress for the first time is given by her a-ma.

  “Today, across the country, babies have a value they never had before, and we Akha get to have them,” she says. “Even multiple litters of twins if we want! Our ruma and nima have accepted this—with sly male satisfaction—because this is the one thing we have better than the Han majority.” When she says, “It is a shame this change didn’t occur sooner,” I know she’s speaking of the one terrible time twins were born in our village. Then she adds, as if to comfort me, “Fortunately, our leaders were quick to embrace change. Other villages . . . Well, it can be hard abandoning something you’ve done and believed in for generations.” She pauses to let me absorb her words. Then, “No matter what, though, we, like Han majority people, would not condone the birth of a baby if the mother was unmarried. Everyone knows that having a child without a husband is taboo.”

  This is one of our traditions that makes no sense. Boys and girls are encouraged to do the intercourse before marriage, but a girl is forbidden to come to a head. No matter. I’m too smart to let the second part happen to me. I’ve read novels, and studied history, math, and science. Together they have taught me the importance of independent thinking, watching out for my body, and looking to the future.

  “You are a woman now,” A-ma says, and the others nod their heads at the solemnity of the moment.

  Just then, from outside, I hear Ci-teh call my name.

  “May I leave?” I ask A-ma.

  It’s an abrupt end to the ceremony, but what else is left to say? I’m shooed out the door, with A-ma calling, “This is a big day for both of you.”