The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane

  “Such a shame when you’re so young.” She blinks a few times. “I was young when I lost my husband too.”

  All these weeks from my spot on my bench, she’s seemed nice enough, but if she thinks I’m going to talk about San-pa . . .

  “Years ago,” she continues, “I was a high school English teacher and my husband taught philosophy at South China Normal University. Have you heard of it?”

  “No, but I grew up far from here.”

  “I can tell.”

  Tu. My cheeks burn.

  “I’ve spent time in the countryside myself,” she goes on, ignoring my discomfort. “During the Cultural Revolution, my husband and I were labeled black intellectuals and sent to the countryside to learn from the peasants. I was six months pregnant. Have you ever been pregnant? Do you have a child to care for?”

  “Yes. And no.”

  She searches my eyes to make sure I’m telling the truth. “No secrets between us. I like that.” After a pause, she says, “My husband and I—two bourgeois revisionists—learned to grow sweet potatoes and millet.”

  She’s talking, and I’m thinking, So much confiding, and we don’t even know each other!

  “Five years after our son was born, my husband caught a cold, which turned into pneumonia.” Her throat hitches. Then, “After his death, I forced myself to survive.” Much like I had to do . . . “I needed to raise and protect my son. I petitioned the authorities to let us come home to Guangzhou, claiming unreasonable hardship. But I wasn’t invited back until after President Nixon’s visit to China. I was told the country would once again be joining the international community. China would need English teachers. My son and I have been here ever since.”

  “I’m glad you were able to return. My teacher where I grew up never went home. He couldn’t get permission.”

  “That happened to a lot of people. My son and I were lucky.”

  The next night and the night after that, I sit with Mrs. Chang. We share stories of the countryside. She doesn’t miss a single thing about it. She’s never been to Yunnan, and although she’s heard of its beauty, she has no interest in visiting.

  “When I think of the countryside,” she says, “I remember only suffering.”

  * * *

  Two months later, my day-to-day routine has barely changed. The noise and crowds are still difficult for me, but I’m adapting. I ride the subway to the tea market, work, ride the subway to the park, and walk straight to Mrs. Chang’s bench. We meet every evening, except Sundays, talk for a half hour or so, and watch the passing girls to evaluate who might make a good daughter-in-law for her. Oh, the laughter! This one’s too skinny; that one’s too fat. This one wears too much rouge; that one’s too pale. This one looks spoiled; that one looks like a factory girl sniffing for a man to buy her gold and jade. Not everything is about matchmaking, though. The more she’s confided in me, the freer I’ve felt to unburden myself of my past, which, until now, I’ve never been able to do. Mrs. Chang knows everything about me. Everything. Never has she criticized me or made me feel ashamed, but once she said, “You did the best possible given your circumstances. Sometimes all we can do is count ourselves lucky to be alive.”

  Tonight, as usual, we’re making our assessments of the girls who pass by—too studious, too vapid, too clumsy, too sure of herself—when Mrs. Chang suddenly blurts, “Are you ready to meet my son?”

  I stiffen, insulted that she thinks so little of our friendship. “I haven’t been talking to you so I might find a husband.”

  “Of course you haven’t,” she responds calmly. “But the two of you might make a felicitous pair.”

  “I don’t want to get married again—”

  “Because of what happened to you—”

  “It’s not that. The way I live now . . . I have the freedom to do as I please.”

  “To me, that’s just another way of saying you’ve seen hardship. I too have survived hardship, as has my son. Don’t you think we’ve all earned a little contentment?”

  I like Mrs. Chang, but she’s wrong if she thinks I want to meet her son. Let alone marry him! Still, in her own clever way she’s been working on me since the first moment she saw me enter the park. She picks up the pile of papers that’s sat untouched between us all these weeks and scoots closer to me.

  “Let me show you some photographs,” she says. “Here’s Jin when he graduated from primary school. We hadn’t been in Guangzhou very long. See how thin he was?”

  I’ve enjoyed Mrs. Chang’s companionship and I don’t want it to end, so I look at every photo with absolute courtesy but zero interest.

  * * *

  In June of the Western calendar—two weeks after being presented with Mrs. Chang’s scheme and three and a half months after arriving in Guangzhou—the heat and humidity of this subtropical city has permeated the Midnight Blossom Teashop, as it has every shop in the Fangcun Tea Market. The unbearable climate doesn’t keep people away, though. By 10:00, every chair and stool around my table is occupied by an international assortment of buyers—from Korea, Taiwan, and Japan. The late afternoon sees the departure of these buyers and the arrival of my regulars.

  Mr. Lin—in his sixties, lean, and successful in our new economy—was the first to bring his laptop to my shop so he could monitor his stocks while speculating on tea futures. The next day, Mr. Chow brought his laptop. He looks like he’s in his sixties too, but not a single strand of gray threads his unruly black mop. He’s an entrepreneur—what else?—and he owns a string of five shoe stores around the city. He’s remained a humble man and is easily awed. Mr. Kwan is the youngest by a few years and the only one who’s had to take mandatory retirement. As a former schoolteacher, he can’t afford a laptop, but the other men share what they find, and all activity is focused on Pu’er.

  The three men all have their own special cups. Mr. Lin, the wealthiest of the three, opens a bamboo box and lifts from the silken cushions a cup made of blanc de chine—perfect for appreciating the clarity of liquor in the bowl. Mr. Chow and his newer money also bought a cup in white porcelain, only his has calligraphy in blue on the exterior. It’s a sad couplet, fit for the widower he is: It was hard to meet you and harder to bid farewell. The east wind blew weak and all the flowers fell. Mr. Kwan’s teacup is a cheap copy of a Ming dynasty “chicken cup,” showing a hen tending her chicks.

  My tea men gossip as though they’ve known each other from childhood. They discuss the final bids at tea auctions, international tea prices, the effect of the weather on terrace and wild tea in Yunnan, Fujian, and other tea-growing regions around the world. Today they debate the health benefits of Pu’er. Mr. Lin, the most highly respected and educated of my tea men, delves deep into the past to press his beliefs.

  “Lu Yü, the great tea master, wrote that tea can alleviate the stoppage of the bowels, relieve melancholy, and remove aching of the brain, stinging of the eyes, and swelling of the joints. He said that tea is like the sweetest dew of heaven, so naturally it can only do us good.”

  “Tea helps us to think quicker, sleep less, move lighter, and see clearer,” Mr. Chow agrees.

  Mr. Kwan, who always tries to best his betters, adds, “Our traditional Chinese medicine doctors tell us that tea—Pu’er in particular—has more than one hundred proven purposes: to boost the immune system, balance the body’s hot and cold temperatures, lower blood pressure and blood sugar, and help melt away hangovers as well as tumors.”

  “It didn’t help my wife,” Mr. Chow reminds them.

  “How do you know?” Mr. Kwan asks, not unkindly. “Perhaps the tea prolonged her life.”

  “Myself?” Mr. Lin cuts him off. “I no longer go to the herbalist or acupuncturist. I believe in Western medicine—”

  “You can afford it,” Mr. Kwan remarks defensively. “But let me point out that American scientists are now studying catechins and polyphenols. You must have read about them. They’re the compounds in tea that provides the antioxidative, antiinflammatory, antimicrob
ial, anticancer—”

  Mr. Chow sinks into his stool. It’s clear that memories of his wife are still distressing.

  “Anti-this, anti-that, anti-everything,” I jump in, trying to lighten the mood. “Yesterday I saw a ‘medicinal’ Pu’er in the drugstore guaranteeing weight loss—”

  “Of course!” Mr. Kwan enthuses. “Because it cuts through grease. The world knows that. My cholesterol is much lower. My lipids too—”

  “But what do these claims matter in the end?” I ask. “Shouldn’t we just enjoy it? Where I come from, we always drank raw tea. You tell me you prefer the stomach-warming and mouth-smoothness attributes of a Pu’er that’s been naturally aged for five years or more. Let us discuss the merits of each.”

  I pour one of the Pu’ers Ci-teh sent from Laobanzhang. In the time I’ve been here, the wholesale price for this tea has jumped five, then ten times. As a result, I’ve been able to pay back Green Jade’s initial investment, so I now own 50 percent of a thriving business. My success has rippled out. My father and brothers are enjoying what to them are instant fortunes. I can proudly say I helped make that happen. As for Pu’er’s supposed health benefits, it’s hard to know what to make of them. A-ma made potions from the mother and sister trees, but maybe the people she gave them to would have healed anyway. Maybe her elixirs gave comfort like the nima’s trance or the ruma’s chanting. We believed we’d get better. No one was overweight in my village, but that’s because we were poor and didn’t have enough to eat. For me, I’m content to see my tea men sipping their tea appreciatively—and quietly.

  * * *

  The next Sunday, my only day off, I walk to Martyrs’ Memorial Gardens to Mrs. Chang’s bench. The old woman has gnawed at me nonstop—“Meet my son . . . Just once . . . We’ll have dim sum together . . . If you don’t like him, you and I will still be friends”—until I’m little more than a chewed down corncob. Now here we are, waiting for her precious Jin to arrive. From photographs, I know what to look for: a man of medium height, average build (I wouldn’t be able to stand one of those heavy Cantonese businessmen), and a full head of hair. From Mrs. Chang’s stories, I know he’s thirty-eight and an entrepreneur, like just about everyone else in China these days. He exports America’s trash—old cardboard and other types of used paper—to China to be recycled into new boxes to ship consumer goods back to the United States, which seems like a utilitarian, if not terribly interesting, thing to do. As a result, he travels often. Mrs. Chang has promised that she’s told him nothing of my “adversities”: “I would never speak of your past nor would I reveal his,” she said. “These things are for the two of you to come to yourselves. But why worry about that now? Let’s first see if you like each other.” So for all I know, he may be just as guarded and mistrustful as I am. Maybe he’s coming here with the sole purpose of getting his mother to leave him alone about me! I can practically hear Mrs. Chang: “Meet Li-yan . . . Just once . . . We’ll have dim sum together . . . If you don’t like her, nothing is lost . . .”

  Jin waves as he comes into view, and I have the benefit of watching him stride purposefully toward us. He wears his clothes comfortably—suede loafers, navy blue slacks, and a Polo shirt—the real thing, not a knockoff. A few strands of gray at his temples catch the light. His wide and intelligent eyes prove him to be his mother’s son. Beyond that, something deep within them instantly puts me at ease. He’s arrived with gifts, which he juggles in his arms so we can shake hands. He’s a businessman, but his palms reveal the calluses of hard work. He isn’t shy, but he isn’t too forward either. He’s brought his mother what I’ve already learned is a traditional Cantonese gift: a tin of imported Danish cookies.

  “And for you, Li-yan, some tea. You’re a young tea master, my mother tells me, so I hope you’ll accept my modest gift.”

  The label says it’s a naturally aged Pu’er from Laobanzhang made from the leaves of a single four-hundred-year-old tree. The tea itself is set in an exquisite red lacquer box whose price may equal my monthly income, which tells me that either he’s trying to show off or he’s honestly interested in me because of his mother.

  “Shall we try it at lunch?” I ask.

  Before he can answer, Mrs. Chang says, “You absolutely should. I’ve arranged a table for you at the Southern Garden Restaurant. You two go along now.”

  Jin and I protest. She was supposed to join us, but she’s like a snake that’s swallowed a mouse. As she sets off toward the subway stop, he says with humor edging his voice, “Together we’ve just lost our first battle with my mother.”

  He owns a car, which might impress some women. Sun and Moon! Who am I fooling? A Mercedes? I’m very impressed. Mrs. Chang told me her son was doing well with his recycling business, but this is very well. But the last thing I’m interested in is money. I like the way he drives, though. Casual, with his wrist draped over the top of the steering wheel. He doesn’t honk like a maniac or swerve in and out between cars to gain an extra few meters either.

  The restaurant is large—and jam-packed. We’re led through a labyrinth of courtyards, banquet halls, waterfall grottoes, and gardens. We cross over a zigzag bridge and enter a small room built to resemble an ancient pavilion. We’re seated at a table that overlooks a weeping willow whose tendrils drift languidly above the surface of a pond filled with lotus in bloom. The waiter brings hot water for me to brew the tea. When I open the lacquer box, however, I’m assaulted by an odor of dirt and mildew.

  “What’s wrong?” Jin asks.

  “I don’t know how to say this . . .”

  “You won’t hurt my feelings,” he coaxes.

  “I’m afraid someone sold you a fake.”

  His expression falls. I wouldn’t be surprised if this news ended our lunch before it began, but then he smiles. “Taken again! I thought those days were behind me.”

  “There are a lot of fakes,” I console him. “Even connoisseurs buy fakes sometimes.”

  “From now on, you’ll always choose our tea, and I’ll take care of other things—like ordering our meals.”

  I spot a good-quality Pu’er on the menu, and he orders an intriguing assortment of dumplings. I expect him to talk only about himself, but he keeps the conversation going by asking me questions. Do I like Guangzhou? Do I know how to drive? Would I like him to teach me how to drive? Have I gone to Hong Kong? I end up enjoying myself much more than I thought I would. After our meal, we meander back through the courtyards, stopping to watch the water tumble over the rocks at the main waterfall. When the valet brings around the car, Jin holds my elbow as he directs me into the front seat.

  “Would you like to go for a walk?” he asks once he’s behind the wheel. “Maybe visit the Orchid Garden? Or we could go to Shamian Island, sit outside, and have American coffee. Oh . . . Do you drink coffee?”

  “I like coffee, but maybe another time.”

  He must think I’m trying to get out of prolonging this day or seeing him again, because his expression collapses as quickly as it did when I told him he’d bought fake Pu’er.

  “I mean that,” I say. “Another time. I’m free every Sunday—”

  “Then next Sunday—”

  “And I’m free every evening,” I add, which makes him smile.

  He offers to drive me home, but I ask to be dropped off at the Martyrs’ Memorial Gardens. We shake hands. He drives off. Before going to my apartment, I sit on a bench and punch in Ci-teh’s cellphone number.

  “I went on a date,” I tell her. “My first ever.”

  She laughs in her distinctive way and asks to hear every detail.

  * * *

  Over the next months, Jin and I see each other twice a week after work and every Sunday. I don’t go to his apartment, and he doesn’t come to mine. He may have an expensive car, but I sense he’s modest in his aspirations, for he often wears the same clothes—clean, but the same nevertheless. (That, or he’s trying to show me that he doesn’t mind that my wardrobe is limited.) I teach him to drink tea
properly, and he’s got a fine palate, easily distinguishing between raw and ripe Pu’ers by whether they taste grassy, floral, fruity, and sharp, or dark, of the forest floor, cavelike, and smooth. He takes me to restaurants all over the city, where I try clams, sea cucumber, and jellyfish. Every bite is strange, and a lot of things I don’t like . . . at all. “It’s true a crab looks like a spider,” he says. “If you don’t like it, then you never have to eat it again.” On those evenings when we don’t meet for dinner, a concert, or a movie, I go to the park and chat with Mrs. Chang. She’s a clever matchmaker, because the more I ask about him, the less she says, which means the only way to know more is to spend time with him.

  Jin and I return again and again to Shamian Island to take in the crumbling beauty of the deserted English colonial mansions, Western banks, and consulate buildings. We always stop for tea or coffee at an outdoor café open for tourists who also like to visit these modern ruins. “Years ago, only foreigners could live here,” Jin explains one evening. From our table, we can see down the tree-lined cobblestone pathway, where a young mother chases after her one child. “Chinese could not step on the island without permission. At night, the iron gates on the bridges were locked and guarded. I wonder what it would take to restore one of these houses and bring back its garden.” The idea sounds wonderful but outlandish, so I just nod agreeably.

  While Shamian Island is charming and peaceful—my favorite place in Guangzhou—we explore other parts of the city too. We take a boat excursion along the Pearl River to look at the high-rise apartment buildings that sprout from the banks, and he showers me with questions: “Do you like the water? Have you seen the ocean? Can you swim?” When I answer, I don’t know, no, and no, he comes back with “Ah, so many adventures lie ahead of us.” It seems like he’s made a decision about me, but so much remains unspoken.

  On Sundays, he drives me into the countryside. We pass what are called villa parks, where rows of identical houses sit in neat lines. Between those enclaves are rice paddies and other fields, where farmers carry buckets of water hanging heavily from poles strung over their shoulders. We visit White Cloud Mountain. It’s more like a hill to me, but the views over the Pearl River delta are pretty. We go to the Seven Star Crags, which, Jin tells me, are like a miniature version of Guilin, with their mist-shrouded peaks and rivers. “One day I’ll take you to the real Guilin,” he says. “You’ll love it.”