Alya Pearls Chapter 1 — Born From Water: A Girl From the Pearl Town

I grew up in a place where pearls were not a luxury,
but part of the landscape —
as familiar as the lakes, the willow trees, and the soft morning mist that rose above the ponds.

My childhood smelled like freshwater and summer rain.
I learned to swim in the same lakes where our pearl mussels lived,
caught fish along the edges of the ponds,
and followed my grandfather as he checked the growth of the shells.

To most people, pearls are jewelry.
To me, they were simply home.

Which my favourite lake nearby our town.

My grandfather began cultivating pearls in 1972 —
a time when almost no one in our little town had even seen a real cultured pearl.
He learned the technique from Japanese pearl farmers,
built the first small breeding ponds with his own hands,
and tended every mussel as if it were a quiet dream growing beneath the water.

From that single beginning, decade by decade,
our family’s tiny workshop slowly expanded.
Today, it has become six large freshwater ponds
stretching across 2,000 mu of land —
and a share in a Tahitian pearl farm in Indonesia,
a place where deep-ocean black pearls shimmer like midnight stars.

People say heritage is something you inherit.
But I think heritage is something you grow up inside of.
And I grew up inside a world of pearls.

The harvest season in that age, 80s' when I haven't born.

As a child, I didn’t know any of this was special.
I just knew that my hands were often wet,
that my shoes were always muddy,
and that the adults around me talked about water temperature, mussel shells, and nacre thickness
with the same warmth that other families used for discussing dinner.

Pearls weren’t ornaments —
they were living things, changing quietly beneath the surface,
teaching me patience long before I knew the word for it.

Now, many years later, when I sit down to create jewelry,
I still feel like that child following her grandfather between the ponds.
The world has changed; our family business has grown;
I have lived in many countries and seen many kinds of beauty —
but the roots of my story begin here,
in a small freshwater town where pearls were simply part of everyday life.

This is where Alya Pearls truly began —
long before I ever imagined creating a brand,
long before I ever picked up a camera or posted my first photo online.

Before anything else,
I was a girl raised by water,
and pearls were the first light I ever learned to notice.