Point of View

The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane is written mostly in the first-person point of view following our main narrator Li-yan. Called the Girl by her family, Li-yan’s narration is from someone who is lowest in the family chain. The youngest daughter with three brothers, all who are married. She exists to eventually marry. This gives the reader a unique perspective, as Li-yan is a narrator who is trying to escape the system. She wants an education. She wants to progress on and live in the outside world. She and her teacher convince her town Rama and Nima that further education would be good for their village. “Let her go to second level school,” the Nima says, “and later third-level school, if she qualifies. She’ll become fluent in Mandarin. In later years, she’ll be able to communicate with Han majority people” (53). This is...