Tea and Serendipity 
The Chinese Emperor Shen-Nung is generally credited with inventing tea 5,000 years ago, a feat heaccom- plished by chance when a fewjeaves dropped off a wild tea bush and drifted into the pot of water he was boiling. Rather than waste the contamfnated water, he drank it, and so became the first human being to experience the "cup that cheers".

Sri Lanka has an association with happy accidents that is borne out by events. By chance, tea became Sri Lanka's chfef export in the 19th century after the island's coffee plantations were devastated by coffee rust in the 1860s. A few tea plants brought from Indfa found a very welcome home in the crisp, high sierra which had the ideal climate. Large tracts of the hill country, and what could be called the foot-hill country, were hurriedly deforested and closely planted with tea bushes, interspersed with an occasfonaJ gum tree to act as windbreak and for shade.

Tea begins its journey from hillside to cup with a gentle tug between the thumb and fore- finger ofa plucker, invariably female and of Tamil descent, who can be found fn swarms on the picturesque landscapes, with baskets strapped to their backs. The process of converting a green leaf into black tea is a tricky a,;aprecise art of trans- formation that takes place in tea factories.

These were often constructed in England and shipped out piece by piece. With louvered windows to assist in the drying process, these white aerated barns stand out against the glossy green hillsides, and Jook rather like Mississippi riverboats after a spectacu- larly high tide. Withering, rolling and fermenting are the successive steps of conversion, followed by a blast in a stove to dry out ail but two percent of the moisture contained in the leaf, and the end result is a quarter of the original bulk. It is then given elegant names based on the the size of the flake, such as pekoe, orange pekoe, broken orange pekoe, broken orange pekoe fannings, and even dust, a low quality and inexpensive tea.

The language of tea can get flowery in describing the subtle variants of flavour. There are even "flowery" teas, which have a "show" of silver or gold "tips" and fetch high prices. The strong flavours of the best Ceylon teas are popular in the Middle East Flavour experts will then classify the tea as "malty, pointy, bakey, thick, coppery, dull or bright" according to strength, flavour and colour.

The graded teas are then auctioned and exported with the buyers relying on the expertise of tasters to guide them. In 1975 the Land Reform Bill put the tea industry in government control leading to a decline of the estates and several smaller tea factories closing down. One of these victims of nationalisation, the Hethersett Tea Factory, has, in a final stroke of serendipity, been reborn as a luxury hotel following the return of the plantations to private manage- ment in the 1990s. The polished wood and brass have been restored, the workingequipment, including overhead line shaft and pul leys using camel-hair belts, have been maintained in their original condition.