“Puer tea’s improvement with age is said to be its distinguishing feature. From this, several key values were drawn out by traders, connoisseurs, consumers, researchers, mass media and the government.”
And that’s a quote from “Puer Tea, Ancient Caravans and Urban Chic” by Jinghong Zhang. (pg. 97)
Caption: A stack of valuable aged Pu’er [beeng] bing cha
Kyle Whittington reviews Puer Tea, Ancient Caravans and Urban Chic
Sitting on the academic end of the tea bookshelf, this is a fascinating and thoroughly well-researched foray into the complex and multi-faceted world of Puer tea. An anthropological study that explores the “cultural biography” of Puer tea, the ethnographic and anthropological research that has gone into this is book is exceptional and really opens up the intricacies of Puer. And yet, despite being such an academic text it is entirely readable and utterly fascinating.
The first third (introduction and “spring”) sets up the rest of the book, introducing and outlining the research, including terms and definitions used throughout. With such a complex subject matter, this is invaluable and helps to deal with complexities around such things as fermentation (pg. 13) and geographic locations. In this, we get to grips with Puer, the tea, the people involved and begin to grapple with the issues surrounding authenticity.
Indeed, the issues surrounding authenticity are central to the book as a whole and open up numerous questions and considerations we should probably all be aware of when it comes to exploring and particularly to purchasing Puer tea.
Building on this grounding, the book jumps up and becomes massively absorbing in the latter two-thirds (“summer”, “autumn” and “winter”). Exploring the changing historical and current cultural context of Puer, the importance of location and differences and difficulties surrounding the production, and of course, aging is both revealing and fascinating. Accessing multiple areas and sources within the realm of Puer we get real insight and understanding without the veneer of the “sales pitch” that pervades much of the public Puer world.
As a native of Kunming and with the rigor and perspective of an academic, Jinghong Zhang really gets at the heart of the matter and presents us with clear and thorough insights. The famed boom and bust of the Puer market are revealed in startling detail. How and why it happened and importantly how its effects were felt and dealt with in different circles. The impact and conversations that arose as part of and as a result of this around authenticity and what is valued in a Puer are explored from producers to connoisseurs and consumers. The importance and meaning of place and how this is varyingly defined in Puer circles and indeed how place affects taste and experience is revealed and explored.
I could go on, there is so much content in this book! But suffice to say a thoroughly excellent read! Whether an aficionado or with an inkling of an interest in Puer, this book is an excellent and essential development of that interest. We thoroughly recommend it!
Here’s what some TeaBookClub members thought:
I’ve recommended this book to a couple of people since I started reading it because I think it’s possibly the best read on tea I’ve had this year. – Aimee
I really enjoyed the view from inside, from someone who got to get close. Especially the films, they’re very complimentary. – Aimee
Her insight into the market crash. The how’s and the why’s were really helpful. – Nicole
Strong research – Brigette
The films are perfect little snippets that illustrate what she’s talking about. – Nicole
It’s very rich. One of the bits I really enjoyed was the translating and contextualizing of some of the idioms. – Anesce
I think she has access to very interesting materials about the producers and the traders’ lives that maybe wouldn’t have found their way in was she someone else. – Aimee
I really appreciated that she defines what she’s talking about and the definitions she uses for words within the tea. The table in the introduction (page13). She explains her use of “fermentation” so I was like, that’s ok, I know what you mean so I get it. – Aimee
She offers a very nuanced version of everything, always giving you more context on everything. You understand more. – Aimee
It’s made me think about how I would buy Puer tea, a lot more thought, a lot more questions. – Ernest
It deepened my understanding and appreciation for Puerh. – Nicole
Although based in the UK, The Tea Book Club is an international group of tea lovers and readers who meet up virtually every month to discuss tea books. If you’d like to join us for the next read, visit teabookclub.org or @joinTeaBookClub on Instagram.
Puer Tea, Ancient Caravans and Urban Chic
Goodreads: In the 1990s, as the tea’s noble lineage and unique process of aging and fermentation were rediscovered, it achieved cult status both in China and internationally. The tea became a favorite among urban connoisseurs who analyzed it in language comparable to that used in wine appreciation and paid skyrocketing prices. In 2007, however, local events and the international economic crisis caused the Puer market to collapse.
Henrietta Lovell seeks to redefine good tea as a beverage that tastes amazing. Tea must also benefit the people who craft it and those who drink it, she says. Her firm buys direct from farmers globally, advocating farmer support and development over costly certifications and rejects teas grown with pesticides and herbicides or blended with additives and flavoring.
Listen to the Interview
Henrietta Lovell discusses her passion for teaSince founding The Rare Tea Co. in 2004, Henrietta Lovell has charted her own course in tea.
The Value in High Quality Tea
Having read Henrietta Lovell’s fabulously engaging book “Infused, Adventures in Tea” earlier this year with TeaBookClub, I jumped at the chance to chat to Henrietta the tea person, founder of Rare Tea Company, mistress of the artful blend and champion of tea farmers. Join me as the Rare Tea Lady spills the tea.
Kyle Whittington: I’m fascinated about the moment someone “gets” tea. What’s been your experience of this?
Henrietta Lovell: It’s very interesting. If they’ve already got a preconception of what tea is, it is harder. So if I’ve got a young person, or they don’t have a very firm, fixed preconception. They might be a little bit more fluid, bit more open to experiencing new things. So then it’s like, “Oh, I’d love to try.” And then “Oh, this is amazing, this is delicious.” But when someone’s got a very strong opinion beforehand, then it’s a really wonderful revelation. Because you know that you’re not just making someone fall in love, you’re making them change an established thought pattern and it’s super exciting. But I don’t really do it, the tea does it. I’ve got a very privileged position where people will trust me enough now to try things and it’s just absolutely wonderful.
It’s one of the most life a?rming experiences. Really, the most is when they’re very resolutely not going to like it. They think they know what they like. And then, they have a taste of something that just starts to excite them. And it’s like “Oh, okay” but their face is still completely closed, they’re just there because they need to be or they’ve been dragged in. And then the face softens, the body language softens, and a sort of joy starts to creep into the face.
Because pleasure is a joy. Let’s not forget. It’s not just amazing flavors. It’s really a sense of euphoria that overcomes you when you discover something that is so beautiful, and so joyous.
Kyle: So is there one tea that really captures people?
Henrietta: I mean that obviously we will have very di?erent tastes and flavor profiles that we enjoy most. But interestingly, it’s often either an English breakfast or jasmine tea because we know those teas very well. And experience is so extraordinarily wonderful because you think you know something, and then it’s opened out to you.
Jasmine silver tip because it’s so clean and bright and fresh and it’s scented with jasmine flower. There’s no flavoring in there. This is just the flowers that have given up their scent, and it’s been absorbed into the tea. That is such an extraordinary experience. People are like “Oh, ooh!” And it’s so extraordinary. They’re sort of, “I know it but I don’t know it.” And they feel quite discombobulated at first, and then very joyous.
And then the other thing is to do is an English breakfast with an industrial teabag, and then an English breakfast made with beautiful teas crafted to be something better than the sum of its parts. And that’s really amazing. You try them side by side, and then there is this revelation because you’ve probably drunk that industrial teabag tea every day of your life, maybe six times a day. And then you have something that is remarkably better. You’re like shit, what have I been missing out on my whole life. And that can be a little bit hurtful. You can’t argue with your taste buds. So when your taste buds say, “Oh my God this is better.” you have to just let go of the past and go Okay, the world is opened out. Whatever their taste background, whatever their profession, whether they’re a taxi driver or a famous chef, or a sommelier, everybody can taste the di?erence. So it’s much more accessible. It’s just having that first sip.
Kyle: You’re known for creating some fabulous blends. But sometimes, blending is seen as the poor relation to a “pure” tea. How do you see blends and the art of blending?
Henrietta: I think it’s the intention of the blend that’s absolutely important. Are you trying to create something that’s better than the sum of its parts? Or are you trying to disguise or make bland and easily indistinguishable? But it can be something really extraordinary. And with such a huge cornucopia of flavors within black teas, but then with blending, it becomes exponential. Absolutely exponential, what you can achieve. I’m still shocked. I’m still surprised now.
Because it’s never the sum of its parts.
The history of scientific revolutions is often led by mistake and that’s often been the case for me.
My favorite thing that I’m drinking at the moment is a blend of almond blossoms from Tarragona with Croatian Camomile. But I never thought I would do that, I did it totally by mistake. I have to admit that to you. I charge lots and lots of money for making blends for people and then sometimes I just do one very good one by total mistake.
Kyle: I’m interested, what’s something that bugs you in the tea world?
Henrietta: But I wanted to say that there’s a lot of snobbery around tea and we should be more inclusive. If we’re going to make a real revolution in the tea world and get people to understand that there is this cornucopia of deliciousness and joy and flavour. Which will in turn, nourish and support the tea community throughout the world. We got to stop putting our noses in air and being snobby and shutting everyone out who doesn’t know, you know, the names of tea estates in Taiwan. It’s really not that interesting, what the code of that that particular varietal is. Because there’s so much more to do with flavor.
Kyle: Talking of snobbery, how do you deal with the naming of a tea? What’s your approach?
Henrietta: Two of the farmers that I admire most (one is Jun Chiyabari in Nepal) they refuse to use any of the old colonial terms. So they won’t do a TGFOP or whatever and they’re now even not calling things green or black tea. Because why is it that it has to be a green or a black tea? One of the teas we have is called Himalayan Spring and it’s actually technically, if you’re going to be super technical, a black tea though it tastes like green tea. And so if we called it black tea it would disappoint everybody. So why do we need to? The flavor profile is softer, richer, much greener than a lot of green teas. If you’re comparing it with a very deep Sencha, you’d be like, well, this is not. How can we call these two things green tea? It’s like trying to compare a whiskey with a rum almost.
If you really love tea, if it’s a real love, not an intellectual challenge, then it doesn’t really matter what it’s called. And if you need to know more about it, you should be able to delve in. I ask questions of my farmers all the time passed on from my customers because that connection is jolly important. If you really need to know varietal number of the tea then we’ll find that out and get it to you. But I don’t think that should be the thing that leads because it’s really o? putting.
People often question me on our packaging, it’s often very simple on the front. It might say just green tea or oolong tea and then on the back it says more stu?. And that’s because I began in 2004 and no one had ever heard of oolong tea, so I didn’t call it Tie Guan Yin, or Iron Goddess of Mercy. So I’ve really tried and it’s been super interesting how farmers have adopted that same thing.
My favorite new terroir, and one that I admired tremendously is in New Zealand in Waikato. They’re producing tea and again they’re not using traditional names. They’re making oolong teas and they’re not calling them oolong they’re calling them, you know, dark or light or whatever. Just simple words that people will be able to understand from about the flavor.
Kyle: You work directly with farms, what is it about working directly that is so important for you?
Henreitta: Working with farms. Working with people to understand, number one, there’s a value in high quality tea, but working with farms. That we don’t just ostracise people or communities that have been reliant on industrial tea. We don’t just say “Oh, we can’t work with them.”
Often people speak about farms that produce speciality tea and non speciality tea. If the person who’s picking the tea is paid the same for both. Well then that’s not fair really, because then the value of that speciality tea is not getting to the picker. And this is not okay. We shouldn’t really work with commercial farms that are producing non speciality tea.
There is not a problem with supply in the world of speciality tea. There is a problem with demand. That is the problem, right?
So it’s our job to try and spread the demand and to educate people and to show people that there’s a reason and a value for buying more expensive tea.
“We no longer work with the Fairtrade organization. We realized we could have more impact by working directly with our farms. We return a percentage of our revenue (not profit that can be fudged).”
But if a farmer is trying to come out of a world where they’ve been reliant on selling commodity tea, cheaper tea because that’s where the market was, we can’t punish them when they’re trying to then create speciality tea. And this makes me so mad. And when you talk about wages and you say, “Well, I shouldn’t work with a farm where the wages are low.” How are they going to improve the wages if we don’t buy more speciality tea? We need to work with these farmers because we have to understand that we need to have relationships. How do you get to that? Like working in a farm in Malawi; wages are low, life expectancy is low, standard of living is low. How do we make a fucking difference there? How do we do it differently? And it’s not by only working with a tiny small holder or tiny farm that just makes speciality tea. That’s part of the solution. But it’s not the only solution.
Rare Tea Co.
Henrietta Lovell is perhaps best known as the Rare Tea Lady, after her company “Rare Tea Co.” rareteacompany.com. Sourcing directly from farmers since the very beginning, Henrietta has traveled the world, searching for rare and precious harvests of teas and tisanes. Her quest has taken her on many adventures, from the far flung and bizarre to those closer to home. She has worked with some of the most prestigious restaurants and hotels around the world, pairing teas and creating bespoke blends. Henrietta founded Rare Charity, which works to bring educational opportunity to young people in tea growing areas.
“The people working in tea estates represent some of the most marginalized communities in many of the world’s poorest countries,” writes Lovell. “Our aim is to give ambitious young people the agency to uplift themselves, their households and their community. Education enables these young people to return to their community as qualified professionals, to implement long-term social change,” she said.
Can a world that has already eroded a third of the planet’s soils feed a population of 10 billion without intensive agricultural practices that rely on heavy inputs of fertilizer, herbicides, and pesticides that sustain monoculture farming?
To answer this question, the Tea Biz Podcast and Blog is undertaking a series of interviews with thought-leaders in tea from organizations such as the Rainforest Alliance, growers in Sri Lanka, where a nationwide ban on the import and manufacture of plant chemicals was instituted in May; and with multinationals like Unilever, a company with extensive tea holdings that recently unveiled its basic principals of regenerative agriculture.
Listen to the introduction
First in a series of podcasts on regenerative agricultureThe Unilever Regenerative Agriculture Principles are agricultural practices focused on delivering positive outcomes in terms of nourishing the soil, increasing farm biodiversity, improving water quality and climate resilience, capturing carbon and restoring and regenerating the land.
Unilever’s Principles of Regenerative Agriculture
By Dan Bolton
In a review of the World Resources Institute’s December report on the looming “food gap” The Guardian writes that “compared with 2010, an extra 7,400 trillion calories will be needed each year by 2050. If food production increases along current lines, that would require a landmass twice the area of India.”
As temperatures rise and rainfall becomes more erratic, attention has shifted to climate change on a grand scale and mitigation at the farm level. Tea is generally grown on hillsides at altitudes less favorable to food crops but the looming scarcity of land for food crops and the depletion of soil on existing farms present long-term challenges for the tea industry.
Unilever acknowledges there is no accepted definition of regenerative agriculture, but the phrase is widely used to refer to practices that include minimum or no tillage, a reduction in the use of chemical pesticides and fertilizers, extensive crop rotation and well-managed grazing for animals instead of industrial feedlots.
Regenerative agriculture is focused on the soil and the enhancement of soil organic matter – SOM is a mix of plant and animal debris, soil microbes in an enriched environment of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen. SOM improves soil structure, reduces erosion, and retains water.
Extensive planting of cover crops also draws carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere where it is retained in the soil.
Unilever’s Regenerative Agriculture Principles (RAP) are focused on regenerating soils, protecting water quality, increasing biodiversity, developing climate solutions; and improving farmer livelihoods.
The intent is to optimize the use of renewable resources while minimizing the use of non-renewable resources; while keeping resource inputs as low as possible.
The goal of protecting topsoil from erosion and restoring existing soil finds widespread support, but some consider regenerative agriculture to be “over-hyped.”
As NBC News reported in 2019, “one much-cited estimate of potential soil sequestration published to date suggests that if regenerative practices were used on all of the world’s croplands and pastures forever — a huge assumption — the soil may be able to sequester up to 322 billion tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.” That’s a long way from the one teraton that is sometimes claimed to be possible.
Sharon Kelly on Desmog.com writes that “A lot of studies that claim regenerative agriculture can have a huge impact “do not address scientific and practical challenges” involved in employing those practices, the World Resources Institute argues.
She goes on to point out that “Big agrichem companies have been marketing a form of regenerative agriculture that could keep farms reliant on pesticides and other chemicals. For example, farmers may use chemicals to kill off crops at the end of a season rather than using tillage. While that may keep the soil in place, the chemicals used can damage the integrity of the soil in other ways. So while it could be good for carbon emissions, it could perpetuate other environmental problems.”
Kelly writes that “While regenerative agriculture may be in-vogue, it’s not well defined. The term “regenerative” — unlike terms such as “organic” — isn’t defined by regulators and “regenerative agriculture” farmers are not required to show that they’ve followed any specific standards. It’s part of a wider suite of strategies that fall under the umbrella of “climate smart agriculture”, a similarly ill-defined term, which critics say can be used by companies to greenwash their images while avoiding regulation.
Giulia Stellari, sustainable sourcing director at Unilever told FoodNavigator that the stated principles are a starting point. It’s important the industry agree on a definition. “Without consensus, it’s difficult to have alignment amongst organization and therefore difficult to track progress.”
Beyond the Farm
Unilever also makes it clear that “The farms in our supply chain are a key focus for our nature regeneration work. But to do all we can to protect and regenerate nature, we must look beyond the farm and consider the wider impact of agricultural and industrial practices. Where we see an opportunity, we will work with suppliers and farmers to apply regenerative principles to restore natural ecosystems too,” writes Unilever.
“Here the opportunity is in working with local governments, technical organizations, NGOs, suppliers and peer companies to educate farmers and build capability and capacity for the protection of natural ecosystems.
“Regenerating nature requires a whole systems approach, and we are continuing to look closely at our role in the system, and the different places we can play our part.”
Next in the series is a conversation with the Rainforest Alliance on how regenerative agriculture differs from sustainable farming.
Unilever’s tea garden holdings span the globe.
Unilever’s Investment in Sustainable Tea Estates
Kenya offers a model for developing countries where smallholders generate most of the tea consumed. In 2006, Unilever pioneered Farmer Field School programs with the Kenya Tea Development Agency (KTDA). Initially supported by the UK Government, and IDH (the Sustainable Trade Initiative) provided funding from 2008. This helped scale it into a program that eventually trained nearly 100,000 farmers – around half women – on good agricultural practices to increase yields and quality.
While the main aim was for farmers to meet Rainforest Alliance certification standards and improve incomes, they also learned how to grow other crops to diversify and protect themselves from tea price fluctuations, as well as good hygiene and nutrition practices.
Advances in sustainable practices are most evident at the Kericho Tea Estate which covers 22,500 acres (9,000 ha) and employs 5,500 full-time workers along with thousands more temporary workers during the harvest season. Kericho also buys significant quantities of raw leaf from local smallholders.
“We have worked hard over many years to improve pay and conditions and we now pay workers well above the industry average – about two and a half times the statutory minimum agricultural income in Kenya as well as health care, education and housing benefits,” writes Unilever. Benefits include transport allowances, paternity and maternity leave, health care, nursery and clean drinking water for the 40,000 people living in company villages.
Pickled tea leaves may sound a bit out of the ordinary but not for Southeast Asian chefs. Burma, now known as Myanmar, is an ancient crossroads influenced by the cuisine of bordering Bangladesh, China, Thailand, and Laos. It is here that laphet has become a national dish that is now finding its way to US and European consumers as branded packaged goods.
Listen to the review
Tea’s popularity is not limited to the choice it offers as a drink alone. Laphetor fermented tea leaf, is used in a salad called the laphet thoke or mixed with rice. The uses of the fermented tea leaves are not limited to salad or a dish.
Cultured Tea Leaves Flavor Many Dishes
By Aravinda Anantharaman
Tea’s popularity is as a beverage, and a versatile one at that. A single plant produces leaves that are processed, blended, flavored, aged, rolled, compressed, bagged, powdered into a product that finds its audience. But tea’s versatility is not limited to the choice it offers as a drink alone. As a green leaf, it’s also an herb but surprisingly this side of tea has yet been tapped to its fullest potential. Except perhaps in Myanmar (formerly Burma) bordering India, Bangladesh, China, Thailand, and Laos. Not surprisingly, tea is also cultivated here, but its most famous rendition is as laphet or fermented tea leaf, used in a salad called the laphet thoke or mixed with rice. The uses of the fermented tea leaves are not limited to salad or a dish. It’s immensely popular in Burmese cuisine – probably the unofficial national dish. It’s said that only the finest leaves of any harvest are used to make lahpet.
Burmese cuisine enjoys fantastic influences, surrounded by countries with culinary wealth. Its popularity may not have reached the levels of say, it’s neighboring Thailand’s cuisine but there’s plenty of offer. Overseas Burmese are now seeing that there is an interest in the lesser known, unexplored cultures of the world, offering an opportunity to promote their own. There are a handful of brands, including Burma Love Foods, a 5-year-old brand from San Francisco whose product range is built on laphet. Besides variations of the dressing, they offer do-it-yourself salad kits which should hold appeal. Myanmar Tea Leaf’s Paline is a homegrown brand producing laphet, said to be the first to brand the product.
“Tea you can eat” is an attractive opportunity for promoters of Burmese cuisine, to take something so familiar as tea but offer it in newer ways, and equally for tea businesses that are looking for deeper cultural connections with tea.
Fermented tea leaves in olive oil
Stir-fried tea salad
Fried mushrooms
Laphet and rice
Hors d’oeuvres
Myanmar Laphet (SO) single origin edible tea leaf is picked and aged at 5,332 feet above sea level in Namhsan, Myanmar’s original capital of tea, producing the country’s highest quality teas for the past 1,000 years.
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…
That’s a quote from The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane by Lisa See (page 175-176)
Kyle Whittington reviews The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane by Lisa SeeThe Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane by Lisa See
A Brilliantly Layered Book
Despite being a work of fiction, one immediately feels that the tea content is thorough and factually based, adding interesting and personable facts to a tea reader’s knowledge banks.
I found myself repeatedly drawn in and captivated by the story whilst doing my initial skim read, checking there was sufficient tea content for TeaBookClub members. There was. Tea content aplenty. Whilst reading, and by the time I’d finished it I found myself with a renewed interest in the world of Pu’er tea, a pond I’d previously only dipped my toe into. Fascinating and well researched tea content is liberally scattered throughout the book, revealing the mysterious world of Pu’er tea. From ancient secret groves and lost production through its re-discovery to rapid growth, boom and bust over the last three decades. Despite being a work of fiction, one immediately feels that the tea content is thorough and factually based, adding interesting and personable factoids to the tea readers knowledge banks. And ultimately, for many, inspiring a new or renewed interest in the world of Pu’er.
Undoubtedly a literary work worthy of the recommendations that brought it to my reading chair, it is interesting how different lenses can change the readers experience. Reading it with a tea mind gives, I feel, a rather different experience to that of a reader coming to it purely as a novel. Something which became clear when discussing it with TeaBookClub members.
For the tea reader, this is a book of two halves. Whilst the first half cleverly sets up Li-yan’s world of Akha tradition and starts her on her journey. It can at times feel like wading through a documentary on the Akha, despite the captivating writing. It’s not until Li-yan makes it to Kunming that the pace suddenly picks up and we’re zipping through the exciting tea world as the pu’er trend picks up pace alongside. I personally wanted to spend more time with Tea Master Sun and in Li-yan’s tea shop in the tea market at this point. But on we zipped to California and the eventual riveting ending, which left me desperately wanting to know what happened next.
There are so many brilliant layers to this book, and it could be looked at through so many different lenses. The rapid transition of the Akha way of life into the modern world was fascinating and could spark its own lengthy discussion. From another view, the mother daughter story, adoption, or Chinese immigrants in the USA could all be delved into and discussed. But for the tea reader this is a wonderful story, packed with great tea content that will either develop or ignite an interest in, and desire to explore the world of Pu’er further.
Here’s what some TeaBookClub members thought:
“I haven’t gotten into Pu’er that much, but the book has definitely inspired me to now.” – Alison, UK
“I thought the ending was a tear-jerker, I was definitely glued to those last ten pages“- Chris, USA
“I found it touching to read” – Aimée, Canada
“I thought it was too encyclopedic initially [the first time reading it], I found the beginning too much explanation about the Akha people but then because TeaBookClub chose it to read I picked it up and I’m happy I really read it though.” – Aimée, Canada
“I found it a little bit cliche when she finds the love of her life and he’s like her knight in shining armor and she’s a little bit of the princess, a Cinderella kind of thing. But then what I really liked about it was the little nuggets about tea culture in China. How the women when they’re picking the leaves talk about life. The culture in the villages, tea is their life, their culture, they have this appreciation of the leaf. She describes that really well; it’s not just about picking and processing. But I thought bits of the story line were a bit Disney, she’s shopping on Rodeo drive, its like Pretty Woman at one point! I liked those little bits about the life, about the culture of tea.” – Alison, UK
“When it talked about selling the fake tea, that was very relatable in the tea industry. And their reaction to it, how could you be upset with all the money they’re making, just make a little bit more. It showed how different the view was on the ground versus our 30,000 feet distance view.” – Chris, USA
“There was so much build up around the tribe and then it jumped very quickly though the story.” – Chris, USA
“The first part really explains the character and how she feels different from the Han majority and from her own tribe.” – Aimée, Canada
“It’s easier to digest the tea knowledge in that [novel] format sometimes, it drops bits of information in and it’s easier to take the information in.” – Alison, France
“I liked how she brings up the challenges of being an adopted Chinese girl in America. Not feeling Chinese, not feeling American…. I thought she captured the experience of wanting to find her [Hayley] birth parents and the excitement she got around seeing how other people found it. It’s a one in a million chance, its never going to happen but at least I’ll try, it makes sense to go and do that. I thought that was captured really well.” – Chris, USA
“I really loved the part with all the girls talking with the psychologist. That was really clever.” – Aimée, Canada
Although based in the UK, The Tea Book Club is an international group of tea lovers and readers who meet up virtually each month to discuss tea books. If you’d like to join us for the next read, visit teabookclub.org or @joinTeaBookClub on Instagram.
The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane
Goodreads: Lisa See is a Chinese-American author. Her books include Snow Flower and the Secret Fan (2005), Dragon Bones, and On Gold Mountain. She was named the 2001 National Woman of the Year, by the Organization of Chinese American Women. She lives in Los Angeles.
