Do you know that the teas filling the shelves of stores are actually no better than straw, and that growing tea bushes on terraces is a sham? How is real tea made? The Akha people, who have been making the healing pu-erh for centuries, know this. In the mountain village, peasants care for tea trees and cherish ancient traditions. This is what they taught the girl Liyang, but after witnessing the ritual murder of newborn twins, she no longer wants to worship the old idols.
She is destined to fall in love, become a translator for a crafty businessman, a single mother forced to leave her daughter in an orphanage, a wife of a drug addict, a student — she swings like on traditional Akha swings, sometimes following the ideals of her people, sometimes renouncing them...
An enchanting narrative, with pu-erh tea as a connecting thread, is a new success from the famous Lisa See, author of the novels "Snow Flower and the Secret Fan," "Peony Pavilion," "Girls from Shanghai," and "The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane."
