The release date for the English version of 'The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane' by
Lisa See is Mar 2017. If you enjoy this novel, it is available for buy as a paperback from Barnes & Noble or Indigo, as an ebook on the Amazon Kindle store, or as an audiobook on Audible.
Li-yan and her family live in a secluded mountain hamlet where they follow the cycles of the seasons and the growing of tea. Enmeshed in tradition and routine, the Akha people live their lives as they have for generations—that is, until a stranger drives up to the village gate in a jeep, the first car any of the locals have ever seen.
One of the few educated females on her mountain, Li-yan, gradually starts to question the traditions that formed her early existence. When she gives birth to an unwed child, she refuses to follow the custom that would have required her to turn the kid over for execution and instead leaves the infant at an orphanage in a neighbouring city, wrapped in a blanket with a tea cake nestled in its folds.
Li-yan leaves her village for an education, a career, and city life as she matures, and her daughter Haley is reared in California by devoted adoptive parents. Haley is curious in her background even though she had an affluent upbringing. Li-yan is pining away for her missing daughter across the seas. Over time, they all turn to Pu'er tea, which has influenced their family's fate for generations, in an effort to find significance in their studies.