The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane(67)

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.



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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, antimicrobial, 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.



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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 . . .”