Tea Master Sun rushes forward to shake hands. “Old friend! Young friend! So good to see two such expert tasters.”
The men exchange cigarettes—not that any of them smoke—as a gesture of friendship and cordiality. Mr. Huang is as disconcerting to me as he’s always been and I’ll always be uncomfortable around him, but if Tea Master Sun trusts him, then maybe I should try to trust him a little bit. As for the boy, A-ma has already pulled him inside and is probably serving him one of her special brews before they go picking, continuing the friendship they’ve had since he and his father first came to our village.
The rest of us pick up baskets, sling them over our shoulders, and begin the long hike up the mountain to the tea trees.
* * *
The next eight days are our busiest, as we pick the first flush of leaves and process them. Once this is finished, Mr. Huang and Xian-rong prepare to return to Hong Kong. The boy looks better than when he arrived—less pale, and with a little weight from First Sister-in-law’s good cooking. And of course Mr. Huang asks about my hidden grove, and I complete our customary ritual by refusing to show it to him. Some things will never change.
I pass on to my a-ba, my brothers, and other men in the village what I learned at the tea college. My plan—as was Mr. Huang’s all those years ago—involves separating our leaves into two batches: one for maocha, the semiprocessed tea that people will be able to drink as is or let age naturally, the other artificially fermented. For now, we convert the two largest drying sheds in Spring Well into fermentation rooms. The semiprocessed tea is built up into piles a half meter high. We sprinkle them with water, cover them with burlap, and let the natural heat of decomposition begin to do its work. I know all is going well when bees begin to hover outside, so attracted are they to the sweet and warm scent. There’s no evidence of mold or the sour odor of rot. Instead, the piles smell of earth and life, ripe apples and pollen. These two sets of tea will later be steamed, pressed into cakes, set outside on trays for another round of drying, and finally wrapped in our new Spring Well Village wrappers made of the finest rice paper.
Every evening, Tea Master Sun brews and pours tea for us. A-ma, A-ba, Mrs. Chang, Teacher Zhang (who is made to laugh in a way no one has seen before by my mother-in-law), and my brothers gather around the table along with Jin and me. We test the astringency of each batch of tea every three days to see how it’s progressing. These are happy times with my family, even though the sisters-in-law must remain apart, as custom dictates.
My favorite moments, though, are those spent with the women in my family, doing a task that I always considered the most monotonous—sorting every single leaf into different grades. Yellow or defective leaves can be made into a low-grade tea for retired teachers, factory workers, and farmers in other provinces that we’ll sell for forty yuan a kilo. The best leaves—and there are so few—are put aside for special batches I’ll be making. And then there are all the leaves in between that will eventually find a proper purpose and the right buyers. Sitting around baskets outside my house, we women sort—a leaf, a leaf, a leaf. I learn who’s in love—visiting the Flower Room, stealing love in the forest, getting married. I hear about petty squabbles. I’m told all the stories I missed during the years I was away.
And I get to see how much life has changed for young girls like my three nieces, who tell me about a new government campaign aimed at ethnic minority girls like them to achieve “independence, self-strengthening, intelligence, and dexterity.” They’re supposed to do things like learn to weave handbags with symbols showing their unique culture, but I don’t see how that will help them become village cadres, go to college, or start their own small businesses. But when First Sister-in-law’s daughter recites popular slogans, “Give birth to fewer babies, plant more trees,” and “If you give birth to extra children, your family will be ruined,” I understand that all three of them are thinking about and planning their lives in ways I clearly didn’t at their age.
As for A-ma, she presides over us in the same way she always did—with a stern but fair hand. She’s particularly tough on Deh-ja, who’s adept at tea sorting but has far more important responsibilities ahead of her.
“My daughter will need to eat beneficial foods when her baby comes out,” A-ma says, speaking to Deh-ja as though she’s a servant. “Every new a-ma needs liver to replenish her lost blood, green papaya to help bring in the milk, and pig kidneys to alleviate her aches and pains. She needs food that will cause warming—ginger, chicken, and pumpkin. You will make sure the new a-ma eats this way for three cycles, thirty-six days and not one day less!”
Deh-ja is illiterate, so she recites recipes to herself as she sorts tea. As for me, I have a different idea of what will happen when my baby is ready to fall to the earth.
Although our days are long and it isn’t monsoon season, I ask A-ma to help me make a proper Akha cap for my baby. Soon enough, all the women and girls in the household want to participate. Tonight, we sit together, a variety show on television blaring a pop song—“Fifty-five Minorities; One Dream”—in the background. The Olympics are coming and the campaign—to find fifty-five sets of twins—has inspired pride throughout the country. My three nieces giggle as they peer at my laptop screen, checking websites that post photos featuring “The Most Beautiful Girls of the 55 Ethnic Minorities” and peruse polls asking, “Which of the 55 ethnic minorities has the most beautiful and marriageable girls?” while my sisters-in-law try to remind me of skills I haven’t used in years.
Third Sister-in-law still does the best handiwork, and she’s as sharp with her lessons as ever, moving from gentle to cross in seconds, depending on how well I’m doing. “Needlework shows a woman’s diligence and virtue,” she reminds me. “You’ll want to add coins, dried red chili peppers, and animal teeth to your baby’s cap to drive away evil spirits. A well-protected baby should wear at least ten kilos of silver.” (Which is not going to happen, but I don’t tell her that.) “And don’t forget to add some tiny mirrors,” she recommends. “Spirits hate to see their own reflections.” But when it comes to my embroidery? Waaa! I’m supposed to incorporate a frog, rabbit, monkey, and cat to show that my baby will be as smart, fast, vibrant, and vigilant as those animals. “My eyes sting to see such ugly work,” she scolds. “You would let your baby be seen in that? Everyone will know his a-ma doesn’t love him.”
As I pull out my stitches, the other two sisters-in-law try to distract Third Sister-in-law from her ongoing criticisms by discussing the way the baby is lying within my body.
“The baby sleeps on Wife-of-Jin’s right side,” First Sister-in-law observes. “Surely it’s a boy.”