Tea Master Sun seems to comprehend that I’m being transformed, yet his words are as colorless as can be. “So, Pu’er. Tell us what you know about it.”
The minute he asks this question, I understand two things. First, I want this opportunity so much more now. Second, I may be the lone applicant from a hill tribe and unacceptable to the others on the panel, but the tea master is the only person in the room who matters.
“Not everyone is looking for aged Pu’er these days,” I answer. “They want raw Pu’er—maocha—because it’s considered healthier and richer in cultural meaning. Still, no matter how a person looks at Pu’er—raw, artificially fermented, naturally aged, young tree, old tree, ancient tree, wild tree, cultivated tree—no one is throwing away tea after six months any longer. Everyone agrees: the older the better.”
“You’re telling me two contradictory ideas.”
“Two contradictory ideas can exist at the same time. Maybe more than two.”
He laughs; the others don’t.
“You asked why I look so young,” I say. “Would it be too bold of me to ask your theory?”
He sweeps his arm around the room, echoing the welcome style. “Everyone here knows why. You drink Pu’er. If all women in our country followed your regimen, we would have the most beautiful women in the world.”
The two women on the panel give me sour looks, and the tea girls blush, but the master isn’t done.
“As China gains prosperity, our people want to appreciate the finer things in life. Pu’er is seen as a way for the newly wealthy to triumph over the poverty of the past. It’s also a channel for investment in a country where our citizens are wary of what the government might do. It’s considered a ‘drinkable antique.’ Tea, a beverage that had been ignored for decades, has become collectible once again. But even though it’s classified as an antique, it’s still alive. And every sip—through the powerful senses of taste and smell—opens our hearts to remember family, love, and hardships that have been overcome. Our ancestors believed that the best teas could eliminate arrogance, dissipate impatience, and lighten our temperaments. You seem to understand all that, but I believe my colleagues still have much to learn about our beautiful drink. What do you think?”
First he comments on the lack of beauty of the other women not only in the room but in all China. Then he sharply criticizes the members of his panel. I was raised never to say anything that would be humiliating to others, but when I recite, “If you strike with the right hand, you must soothe with the left,” the room goes stunningly quiet. In publicly chastising the tea master, I’ve put myself in his same category, either ruining or securing my prospects.
Haley Davis – Miss Henderson’s third-grade class, December 10, 2004
Things I need—huge
Things I need—big
Things I need—small
Liquid
Good education
Ski boots
Food
Parents
Friends
Sun
Peace
Violin strings
Earth
Body
Dress for Easter
Air
House
My stuffed bunny
Moon
Whiskers (my cat)
New Harry Potter book
THE WORLD HAS COME
I begin to wait. I want this. I lie awake at night, weighing my chances of getting into the Pu’er program, doubting the answers I gave Tea Master Sun, and questioning why I had to be so rude to him when all he had done was show interest in me. After five days, I’m distracted, impatient with guests, and sharp with the maids. I’ve never taken a vacation from my job, but I need one now.
When I first heard about vacations I was surprised, because the closest we Akha had to anything like that was rainy season—the months of darkness when spirits were considered to be mischievously active and we worked on our weaving, sewing, and embroidery. Hence, I’ve always turned down the opportunity to go on holiday. Even if I’d been forced to take one, where would I have gone? Home, to where people might still blame me for San-pa’s terrible death? To tourist sites, alone, to remind myself that I have no one to love me? So I’ve earned the gratitude of my co-workers, because I cover their shifts when they take time off. But now I need my family. I want them to see how far I’ve come, but I also need their good wishes. It’s a momentous decision and the outcome may not be what I hope for, but I ask my manager if I might return home for three weeks. “It’s spur of the moment,” he tells me, “but how can I say no? You’ve been an exemplary employee for many years, and you’ve never asked for a single favor.” I leave on the eve of what Westerners call Christmas, promising to be back in time to cover the absences of others who wish to visit their families during Spring Festival.
I buy a ticket for the evening bus to Menghai. The road has been improved, so the trip lasts just twelve hours. In the morning, after an uncomfortable and mostly sleepless night, I board a minibus, which takes me and about a dozen others into the mountains on a new, roughly carved, extraordinarily bumpy, and very narrow dirt road. After a few hours, I get off at the stop for Bamboo Forest Village. When I was a girl, the village was nothing—no better or worse than Spring Well. With the new road and the bus stop, Bamboo Forest has opened a small café and started a morning farmers’ market. About half the women wear their traditional Dai, Bulang, or Akha attire. The rest are dressed like me, in blue jeans, T-shirt, and tennis shoes. I’m taking in the surprising changes when a motorcycle skids past. The rider shouts at me to get out of the way. I’m stunned.
I swing my knapsack onto my back and head out of Bamboo Forest. Not long after I dip onto the trail that will lead to Spring Well, I pass a construction site with bulldozers moving earth and workers building massive retaining walls. The main structure is still a puzzle, shrouded in bamboo scaffolding on which dozens of men crawl like ants. I can’t imagine what it is or why it’s here. But soon enough the noise and ugliness are behind me, and I’m on a quiet forest path. People are out, tending to their trees. Songs come to me on wafts of air. It’s winter, but tea-picking season is around the corner and each tree seems ready to burst forth with emerald-green buds. Every leaf—so alive—reaches for the morning sun and sends forth a fragrance that’s light and brilliant. I pick a leaf and chew it. With each breath, another layer of huigan is released. I am home.
I know things are now better for my family. When I was first hired at King World, I worked to repay A-ma. Then I sent money to help the family. But two years ago, Teacher Zhang wrote to tell me that life was going so well at home—income from tea work had increased fiftyfold, an amount difficult for me to absorb—that I no longer needed to worry about my family. Still, I expect everything to be more or less the same, believing that our culture and traditions are so old and deep that they would withstand all attempts to transform them. I’m reassured when I arrive at the spirit gate that protects the entrance to Spring Well. But as I walk farther? Dogs nap in the middle of the lane that divides the village and chickens peck at the ground, but everything else is different. Many of the bamboo and thatch houses have been replaced with gray brick boxes. Plastic troughs in pink, orange, and green lie about—filled with soaking laundry, vegetables to be washed for the evening meal, or animal feed. Empty plastic water bottles stand at attention in a neat row on one veranda. And just like in Bamboo Forest Village, many of the people wear Western-style clothing, although every woman still covers her hair with a scarf of some sort. I don’t recognize a soul; no one seems to recognize me either. But what’s most shocking is the number of people sitting on the ground with piles of tea leaves spread before them, negotiating with outsiders. I pass one group of visitors bargaining hard. They’re Korean!
When I reach my home . . . It’s gone, as are all the newlywed huts. Where our house once stood is a building that resembles a greenhouse—glass panes held together with aluminum struts. Nearby are four stucco structures—all of the
cheapest and ugliest materials, soulless, antiseptic, not one with glass in the window frames. None of them are built on stilts, so there’s no place for livestock to live. One is slightly larger than the others. I don’t see separate verandas for the women’s and men’s sides of the house. The single door stands open.
“Hello,” I call at the top of the stairs. I peer into the interior of the house, where people bustle back and forth. “Hello?” I say again, uncertain.
Young and old, men and women, all stop what they’re doing to glance in my direction. After a long moment, someone says, “It’s Girl.” I recognize A-ba’s voice. The others part, clearing a way for him. He wears plastic sandals and jungle fatigues, as though he’s in a war movie, which is about as disconcerting as anything I’ve seen so far. Otherwise, he’s still my a-ba—small and wiry. Then A-ma comes to his side. She wears her indigo tunic, skirt, and leggings, and her headdress is as magnificent, welcoming, and comforting as I could hope.
* * *
That night, A-ma and the sisters-in-law prepare a meal unimaginable when I was a child: pork four ways (crispy skin, barbecued ribs, braised belly, and meatballs in clear broth), a soy-sauce roasted goose, bitter melon with scrambled egg, rice, and a fruit plate. Instead of eating on the floor around the warmth and glow of an open fire in the main room, we sit on tiny chairs at a small table. This furniture—built little to save cost and for easy storage—nevertheless shows my family’s improved circumstances. During dinner, my relatives pepper me with questions about the world beyond Nannuo Mountain. My brothers ask about banks and loans, because they now have so many expenses. The sisters-in-law want to know about cosmetics, and I give them my lipstick to share. Their three daughters, who were all born within one month of each other, are now eight years old, attending Teacher Zhang’s class, and irrepressibly inquisitive:
“Do you think I can go to secondary school, Auntie?”
“How old should I be when I first steal love, Auntie?”
“When can I visit you in Kunming, Auntie?”
After dinner, we gather around a space heater with a single bare—and very dim—lightbulb hanging from the ceiling. Electricity! When tea is poured, I gather the courage to question the changes in Spring Well, pointing out that after centuries of steady life, so much has been upended during the eight years I’ve been away. “And it all started with Mr. Huang—”
“Our lives changed rapidly after the Hong Konger came to us,” A-ba agrees, “but we haven’t seen him in years. You know how he is—always looking for something no one else has. He’s probably experimenting with leaves in a village on one of the other tea-growing mountains. So be it. With all the traders and collectors visiting us, we don’t need him anymore.”
“But what about our traditions?” I ask.
Faces stare back at me silently, but their message is clear: Who are you to ask this question with your city ways?
“Everyone changes,” A-ba says at last. “We still live in the forest, but the world has come to us. We continue to have the Swing Festival, build a new spirit gate each year, and consult with the ruma about when to plant our crops, pick leaves, and select propitious marriage dates, but we don’t have time for all the cleansing ceremonies, sacrifices, or worrying about Dog Days and Buffalo Days when we have so much work to do. Tea growing is very lucrative, you know.”
Truly, what is stranger—the matter-of-fact way he’s just dismissed our customs or the way he speaks about business? Business!
“We have to guard our product,” he continues. “Some especially greedy tea traders have sent hooligans onto our mountain to look for the most ancient trees and chop them down, because it’s easier to harvest their leaves that way—”
“They would chop down a tree?” I ask, shocked. “What about its soul?”
But no one seems interested in that.
“When the government instituted the Quality Safety Standard,” First Brother carries on, “we could no longer dry our leaves or artificially ferment them on the ground or on the floor of the house. All tea processing had to be done fifty meters away from animals, so we were forced to sell our livestock. The new rules turned out to be good for us, because now nothing can taint the flavor of our tea. We borrowed fifty thousand yuan to build the drying and processing building, where our old home once stood.”
“And we all have our own houses with indoor plumbing!” Third Brother chimes in.
Their optimism and free-spending ways have been buoyed by an early thirty-year extension to the Thirty Years No Change policy. Knowing he would “own” land until 2034, First Brother ripped out the tea bushes on his terraces, while Second Brother took out his pollarded trees so new tea trees could be planted from seeds. A-ba gave up on his vegetable plots—“We can buy what we need in Bamboo Forest Village”—so that he too could plant tea trees. For all three of them, the few wild tea trees on their respective properties have helped pay for these improvements, while Third Brother’s once worthless old tea trees are now the most valuable asset in the family . . .
“His trees, and your grove,” A-ba adds pointedly. “Of course, we can’t get your a-ma to let us take a look—”
Mercifully, First Brother cuts him off. “None of us could have predicted today’s situation. Buyers now visit from all over Asia to buy Pu’er to drink, sell, and collect. We have to host big banquets, hoping to make them happy. There’s a lot of competition. That’s why we need to borrow at better rates.”
“And the price of tea keeps going up and up and up!”
Everyone pesters me about my chances of getting into the tea college.
“If you do well,” First Brother exclaims exuberantly, “you can sell our family’s tea and make it famous!”
I have only one response to that: “I have to be accepted first.”
* * *
No one embodies the changes in Spring Well more than Ci-teh, whom I see the next night at a banquet my family hosts for a buyer from Japan. Her giggling ways seem to be gone, and any embroideries that would mark her as an Akha have been packed away as well. She’s gained weight—as has almost everyone in Spring Well—and her stomach and breasts push against the buttons of her flowered cotton blouse.
“Visit me tomorrow!” she urges. And I do. Her house is the nicest in the village, naturally. “The first with electricity,” Ci-teh boasts. She’s also the first person in Spring Well to own a cellphone. She insists we exchange numbers. “So we never again lose our connection.”
We were once very close, but our lives have taken different paths, which she reminds me of again and again. “You abandoned me. You left without a word. So hurtful you are.” While the things that happened to me remain a secret, the steps in her life are well known by all on Nannuo Mountain. After her parents died, Ci-teh consolidated the land awarded to her family in the Thirty Years No Change policy. In addition to her own groves, she also leases stands of tea trees from other families, which has earned her the title of the single largest grower on Nannuo. She further strengthened her status when she paid the ruma and nima to allow her brother, Ci-do, to return to Spring Well after a spiritual cleansing—of what degree or intensity no one tells me—plus nine days of feasting provided to every man, woman, and child in the village, all paid for by her. The things money can buy . . .
“He has a new wife and two children. Times change, but the stain on him from fathering human rejects will never be completely erased,” Ci-teh confides in an offhand manner. “It’s best for everyone that he and his family spend most of the year visiting the great sights our country has to offer.”
But for all her money, success, and power, she’s been unable to control or influence the child-maker spirits. She and Law-ba have three daughters and have broken with Akha naming practices to show their disappointment: Mah-caw (Go Find a Brother), Mah-law (Go Fetch a Brother), and Mah-zeu (Go Buy a Brother).
“Why haven’t you remarried?” she asks me another day when we sip tea in the bamboo pavilion she’s built to en
tertain her international buyers. “If a wife dies, a man can remarry in three months. When a husband dies, a woman must wait three years, but that has come and gone for you.”
Does she spout these old-fashioned aphorisms just to goad me? She’s obviously let go of many traditions herself, but our loving but contrary relationship is the same as ever. I give a bland answer. “I want to get ahead in life.” The reality is something murkier. I’ve been alone and lonely for eight years. I’ve blinded myself to the advertisements for online dating. I’ve also learned how to walk through parks and ignore the middle-aged mothers who approach me with photos of their sons and lists of their accomplishments and possessions: a bicycle, a motorcycle, or a car; living with parents, renting an apartment, or owning a condo. “You’re too old not to be married,” more than one mother has told me. Unasked, by the way. Then, “Please consider my son.” But I can’t allow myself to repeat the mistakes of the past. If I were ever to fall in love again, it would have to be with someone who’d be accepted by my family. Otherwise, too much heartbreak.
“Do you date?” Ci-teh persists, using the Western word. “Do you go to the movies and have noodles with men?”
“Most men don’t want to go out with an Akha,” I say, hoping to end the subject.
She nods knowingly. “You look so young, and you’re too quiet. You are tu, and not in an admirable way. What about stealing love in the forest while you’re here? Surely our men will overlook your faults, and you can have fun too.”
“I don’t want to steal love.”
She ignores that and asks, “What about a foreigner? You work in a hotel. Maybe you could marry one of them and move to America.”