This is an excellent book. Lisa See, who has Chinese American heritage, has written numerous best-selling novels, including this one. In this particular story, she deals with the Han majority culture in China, the hill people called the Akha, who have a different culture and genetic makeup from the majority peoples in China, and the phenomenon of Chinese girls and young women who were adopted from China by American parents. Although the story is fictional, the issues and the facts of these different groups of people are accurately portrayed, and the many characters seem very real. From my own experience with the Hmong people, whose ancestors came from Southern China to the hills of Laos about 200 years ago, the author’s descriptions of the Akha people sounded similar in several ways. All of the characters, whether Chinese or not, seemed very real.

The book begins in 1988, in Akha territory, in the tropical mountains, where certain kinds of tea are grown and sold. The main character, Li-yan, is only called “Girl” in her family. She narrates this section in the first person, telling the story of her family and of her culture. The author did extensive research, including traveling to China, to create this very complex, compelling story.

It starts when Li-Yan is a young girl, and her mother is a folk healer, a grower of rare tea, the matriarch of her family, and an important person in the village. She is also a philosopher, a wise woman, who wants to hear about each of her children’s dreams and then interprets their meaning. Li-yan invents a dream and is surprised when her mother does not sense it is a fabrication. Her friend, Ci-the, is very good at embroidery, one of the most important crafts for females, and Li-yan is not very adept at it. Her sister-in-law, Deh-ja, is pregnant and hoping for a boy, as everyone seems to want lots of sons. In these hill tribes, China’s one-child policy is not enforced, partly because of their isolation and possibly because the authorities know there is no access to reliable contraception and they wouldn’t follow outsider’s dictates, anyway. Growing and picking tea, fermenting it and selling it, are the main occupations for everyone in the village from childhood on, except possibly the spiritual leaders, who also act as the local law, based on the tribal beliefs and practices. Sometimes the tea buyers do not offer a fair price, and people do not make enough to supply their basic needs. Li-yan meets a boy close to her age, San-pa, from another village, and becomes his friend, although her extended family does not trust him nor his family.

As the story progresses, her friend Ci-the’s brother and his wife, Deh-ja have twins, which is such a taboo in their culture that they are expected to kill the babies (delivered by Li-yan’s mother), and they are banished from the village, with Deh-ja to blame for this bad luck. Li-yan’s teacher in school, Teacher Zhang, has been sent there, banished in a sense, because he did something that upset the governmental powers. He sees that she is very bright and he mentors her for years. Drug smuggling, not just raw opium, but also heroin, has begun to make its way into this remote part of China, and with it, addiction and related problems. Reading these portions, the reader sees how ancient cultures begin to fall apart. Many of their beliefs seem strange, even cruel to the outsider, but the loss of that structure results in worse outcomes. Li-yan is caught between her family’s traditional life and her desire to get an education and lead a different life.

When she is grown, she marries San-pa, against the wishes of her family. He goes to Thailand to make money, but when he returns, he has become both a drug dealer and an addict. Part of the Akha customs is that young people can have sex rather casually (called “Stealinglove”), but they are expected not to get pregnant! When Li-yan realizes she is pregnant, they have been married, but he has left. She gives birth secretly in the mountains, delivered by her mother, and the baby is a girl. She leaves and realizes she cannot raise this child on her own, so she decides to leave her near an orphanage in Menghai, because if she returns to the village with her child, the custom dictates the baby must be killed. Her mother gives her some charms for the baby, a very special teacake with a design engraved in it, and a bracelet of her own, with a dragon on it. When she leaves the baby, she leaves the charms and the teacake with her. Later, she finds San-pa again and they try to make a go of it, and try to get the baby back, but are told she’s already been adopted to America. The director takes the precious dragon bracelet in exchange for not having them arrested for abandoning the baby!

As the story progresses, Li-yan makes a life for herself, completes her education, and becomes owner of a tea shop. Letters from doctors concerning the daughter, now adopted in California and given the name Haley Davis, tell of her health issues, and later of her life as she grows up, with stories of people asking her adoptive mother such questions as, “How much did she cost?” and, “Is it hard for you to love her when she doesn’t look like you?” Her school class has a “Roots” project, and her mother is upset that she chooses to make her project about her Chinese heritage, rather than her adoptive family’s long history in the U.S. She cannot understand why she feels separate and why she asked, “Are you going to send me back?” They want to take her on a “Roots” trip to China, which she is not enthused about.

The long and complicated story of how Li-yan became successful, how she met and married a wealthy Chinese man and moved to California, is compelling to read, as are the incidents in Haley’s life, including a therapy session with other adopted Chinese girls, now all pre-teens or teenagers. There are so many twists and turns in this book, with the stories of both Li-yan and Haley, named Yan-yeh at birth, the reader may wish for a chart to keep all the characters straight, although as the story progresses, they seem like actual people the reader knows, not just fictional characters.

This is the first book I’ve read that tells both the birth mother’s story, her thoughts, feelings, memories, and hopes, and also the relinquished daughter’s thoughts, feelings, and hopes. Usually a book focuses on one or the other. It also includes the adoptive mother’s thoughts and feelings, told in the form of letters to her own mother.

The ending is so special I won’t give it away here, because the reader will want to experience it for him-/herself. This is a book well worth reading for anyone, but especially for anyone with an adoption connection.

At one point, Haley says, “A few years ago, someone told me about a concept called the grateful-but-angry Chinese adoptee. ... It was hard for me to separate what I should be grateful for and what I was actually grateful for. I guess that’s why I decided it should be grateful and angry, not but angry.” She is asked, “Do you see yourself as Chinese or American?” and she answers, “One hundred percent American and one hundred percent Chinese. I’m not half and half. I’m fully both. I’ll forever wear my Chinese-ness on my face, but these days, when I look in the mirror I don’t see how mismatched I am in my birth family or that I don’t feel Chinese enough. I just see me.” At that point, she is in China, but has not yet met her birth family.

After the ending of the story, the book includes questions for book-reading groups, and an interview with the author. I usually skip these, but in this case, they help tie it all together. For any birth parent, or any adoptee, this book brings up the reader’s own thoughts, feelings and memories, the pain of relinquishing, the joy of adopting, the losses for everyone, and the hopes that the truth can be healing.