The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane(26)
A few days later, we’re catching up on our home chores before tea-picking season begins when frightening noises come thundering from the forest. They grow louder and nearer. Small children cry into their mothers’ tunics. Elders quake on their sleeping mats. Dogs crawl under houses, too afraid to bark. The sounds are mechanical but inconsistent—humming one moment, grinding the next. They abruptly end with a hideous cough. Everyone in our village must be inwardly thanking the ruma for building a spirit gate so powerful it barred whatever the horrible thing is from entering Spring Well.
No one ventures to the gate to investigate, but the birds begin to chirp again and the dogs come out from their hiding places. A few minutes later, we hear a male voice call . . . in Mandarin, “Hello, hello, hello!” No one answers. The voice rings out again. “Hello, hello, hello! Is anyone here? Come out. Let us meet.” Again, the voice speaks Mandarin, but it sounds off, more melodious, as though he’s singing. Still, the voice clearly belongs to a man, and not a spirit. Even I can tell that.
A-ba comes to the dividing wall. “Girl, what is he saying?” After I translate for him, he says, “You’d better come with me, since you’ve learned the man’s tongue.”
I meet A-ba outside, where the headman, ruma, and a few other men have already gathered. They all hold their crossbows. As we near the spirit gate, I see a man, a boy, and a car. A car! Green, with a tin red star attached to the front. It’s an old People’s Liberation Army mountain vehicle—something I’ve seen in school posters commemorating the War of Liberation. The car door opens, and another man, who’s been sitting behind the wheel, steps out. We stay on our side of the spirit gate. The visitors remain on their side of the gate. In the silence, a lot of surveying happens. The driver is dressed nearly identically to Teacher Zhang: blue pants and jacket, like every other nonminority man I’ve ever seen. But the other two are as odd as can be. The little boy is bald, for one thing, but his father quickly covers his head with a tiny cap with a big brim in front. The child’s pants—bright yellow!—are cut well above his knees. The tops of his shoes are made of cloth, but the bottoms look like bendable plastic. His shirt has short sleeves and hugs his body. No buttons or anything like that. Instead, a drawing of a yellow boy with hair that comes up in sharp spikes decorates the front. I try to pronounce the word that’s been printed in Western letters coming out of the boy’s mouth: Cow-a-bunga! It’s not a word I know.
I step forward.
“I’m guessing, young lady, that I must speak to your elders through you,” the man says. He strides straight through the gate—he must have been warned not to touch it—and extends his hand. “In Mandarin, my name is Huang Benyu. I’m from Hong Kong.” So he’s a native Cantonese speaker—which explains his accent and extra tones—but his Mandarin is much better than mine.
“Hong Kong,” I murmur. He could just as easily have said the moon.
“This is my son,” he states, motioning for the boy to join him. “While we’re on the mainland, we’ll also use his Mandarin name, Xian-rong. He is five years old and my only son. My only child.”
I translate this information for the men around me. I feel that we must all be staring at the strangers in the same way—our mouths agape, our eyes wide. Apart from Teacher Zhang, none of us has met someone from outside our province, let alone from another country. Hong Kong.
When no one says anything, he goes on: “I’ve come a long way to buy your tea. I’m a businessman. I make and supply cranes. China is in great need of those now.”
Why are we in need of birds? No idea, but we listen anyway.
“That is my vocation. My avocation is tea. I am a tea connoisseur.”
“Huang Xiansheng,” I say, using the Mandarin honorific for mister, “I don’t know how to translate all of this.”
He throws his head back and laughs, exposing every single one of his teeth. The men around me edge back. I retreat even farther, wanting the protection of my a-ba and brothers. From my secure position, I take a closer look at the stranger. His head is shaped like a turnip—plump, with vaguely purple cheeks. His hair is as black as lizard eyes. He’s chubby, like the posters I’ve seen of Chairman Mao. I never believed those images were real—that anyone could look like that, so fat, with a belly sticking out—but the way the stranger’s belt circles his middle, emphasizing all the food that must have gone to build it, almost makes me want to laugh. His pants have sharp creases down the front and back. The material doesn’t resemble anything I’ve seen before. His short-sleeved shirt is crisp, also with sharp creases.
The stranger regards us too, taking our measure in the way a farmer might look into the mouth of a water buffalo. I don’t think he likes what he sees. But I have an idea of what he is: rich. Not well off like Ci-teh’s family, but something altogether different.
“Is there a place where we can sit and talk?” he asks. “I’d like to sample your tea, possibly buy some.”
After I translate, most of the men scurry back to the village. They want no part of this. Only the headman, ruma, and my a-ba and brothers (who must safeguard me) remain. The men whisper among themselves. We Akha are known for our hospitality, but they question bringing the stranger into one of our homes. The headman makes the decision.