Gambung Tea in Limbo

Nights are colder during the dry season in the highlands. In Gambung, we were kept warm by the hearth and the hospitality of tea pickers. We also discovered that the state of Gambung tea was rocky.

KOMPAS/RIZA FATHONI

A worker holds a basket of pekoe (tea buds) on 20 June 2019 at the Tea and Cinchona Research Center in Gambung, Mekar Sari village of Pasir Jambu district, Bandung regency, West Java. Pekoe is harvested to produce white tea, the most expensive and highest quality grade of tea.

I wasn’t late evening yet. The call for Isya (evening prayer) had resounded only an hour and a half ago. But the night seemed to fall quickly around the Tea and Cinchona Research Center (PPTK) in Gambung, Pasirjambu, of Bandung regency, West Java. The quiet was only broken by the chirp of crickets amid the chill air.

On that Wednesday evening (19/6/2019), we were visiting one of the houses owned by the PPTK in Gambung, around 46 kilometers from Bandung municipality. It is among the oldest tea plantations in West Java, built by Rudolph Eduard Kerkhoven at the end of the 19th century. Hella S. Haasse tells the full story of the Gambung plantation in the novel Sang Juragan Teh (The Tea Master, 2015).