December 2003
The Hill Club was founded in 1876 by W.H. Walker, J. Wickwar and H. Saunders and started with only a billiard room and a bar. The Hill Club was established by the early Coffee, Cinchona and Tea planters and it was natural that most of the members were foreign planters. The first president was Edward Rosling, elected in 1899. The current building dates from the 1930s, when it was built by the British, Colombo-based firm of Edwards, Reid and Begg. The Club did not allow membership to women or locals until 1967.
(Wikipedia)
Of Nuwara Eliya:
The city was founded by Samuel Baker, the explorer of Lake Albert and the upper Nile in 1846. Nuwara Eliya's climate lent itself to becoming the prime sanctuary of the British civil servants and planters in Ceylon. Nuwara Eliya, called Little England, was a hill country retreat where the British colonialists could immerse themselves in their pastimes such as fox hunting, deer hunting, elephant hunting, polo, golf and cricket.
(Wikipedia)
The drive to Nuwara Eliya from Kandy was long and tortuous. One really had to want to get to the place. It felt at times as if a snake had laid out the path. Clearly the slower (but less serpentine) train journey would have been better. The land was very misty and mysterious at times and, of course, tea simply abounded. Whatever cloud-forest had covered those mountaintops had been sacrificed for the world's unquenchable thirst for tea years before. The plantation owners in their day had been famous for their eccentric behavior - but what could be expected of British men trying to recreate England in another country while living out some colonial fantasy?
I loved this part of Sri Lanka, visually. However, I came to know the plight of the tea estate workers was indeed dire. Even though I had been to Darjeeling years before, we were far more excited about being in the Himalayas and taking photos than learning about the tea economy. In Sri Lanka we toured the plantations and learned about the lives of the workers. They toiled tirelessly picking tea or worked long hours in the huge "factories" which processed the product. It was in Nuwara Eliya that I learned about the tea in tea bags, too.
Tea is dried and then passed along a belt where workers first pick off the best leaves for high quality tea and then the remainder passes down the line. The grade of the tea goes down at each subsequent selection point. A fine tea is very nearly a powder - like Turkish coffee, larger leaf-tea is sold loose and is of a lower grade, and finally tea for bags is literally what is left after everything has been picked over. The least desirable bits plus the sweepings from the selection floor are chopped up and bagged - THAT is the grade that goes in tea bags. Yikes!
Even those workers who select and process the very expensive teas that are exported worldwide are paid very little for a skill that is akin to a sommelier. Far more people drink tea than wine, too. One packet of the best quality tea might be a month's salary of the person who selected it and even twice the salary of the person who picked it.
My view of tea had changed for both good and bad. I loved learning about different tea qualities and what actually made a "good tea". I hated the exploitation. My impression of colonial excess had gotten even worse. Take note from the Wikipedia passage above that the Hill Club only allowed locals and women in 1967. How could anyone involved in such a business have had any moral compass? Although I loved the look of the Raj in South Asia I was slowly coming to hate all it represented.
Every single time I drink tea from a tea bag, I remember Sri Lanka. Some things were better left unknown.