Reading the Tea Leaves

by Rebecca

My Mom has always drank a lot of tea, and now I do too.

It may, or may not, have been at Mom's suggestion that I settled on the general topic of Tea for the Information Report I was required to write in Grade 6. The topic really caught my interest though. Tea is still something I'm passionate about.

The report on Tea was the first time I can remember doing a really deep dive into topic research. I devoured everything I could read about tea. I read every reference in the elementary school library, including the encyclopedia entries. I took out a stack of books from the adult section at the public library. I scoured back issues of National Geographic in my Granny's basement looking for any reference I could find.

I learned a lot about tea from that report: How it's grown; where it's grown; about trade routes and how tea spread across the world; who drinks it and how. It even lead me to learn a bit about English Tea Garden design and the Tea Rose Bush. I'm certain I did some "taste" testing, drinking more than a cup or 2 with Mom.

At that time I discovered that tea was grown across the world in Asia and I was pretty disappointed that I wouldn't be doing a field trip as part of my research. A few years back I discovered Westholm Tea actually grows their own tea in the Cowichan Valley in Canada. A trip to their farm and Tea Room was a dream come true for me. Even if I'd been able to read the tea leaves, I would have thought that seeing their small hillside in Canada was as close as I was going to get to seeing how tea was grown.

If you're at all in to tea, I really do recommend a trip to Westholm Tea!

As fate would have it though, we were soon considering moving across the world to Singapore. After first googling "Disney in Asia," just to be sure I would still have some Disney options, I then googled "Tea Plantations near Singapore," and vowed that a visit to a tea plantation was on my must do list.

Now I have stood on an almost 100 year old tea plantation, viewing tea plants as far as I could see, and to cap it off, my Mom was there with me too.

If I see nothing else of Asia, I will leave satisfied, because visiting a tea plantation was my childhood dream come true.

All tea as far as you can see.

The puffy-looking bushes in the photos - all tea plants. The lines are the gaps between bushes. The trimmed tea bushes make the hillsides look so soft. 
After my first tea plantation tour and a cup of tea.