The picture above shows the "Tea Picking Ancient Road" leading to Tong'an County, Xiamen City, from the main tea-producing areas such as Xiping Town, Huqiu Town, and Daping Township in Anxi County since the end of the Ming Dynasty. Before the 1950s, the locally processed fine oolong tea in Anxi was loaded into wooden boxes with built-in tin film, coated with bamboo baskets, and transported tea from Daping to Tong'an County Tea Stack 30 kilometers away for storage, and then sent to Xiamen, Zhangzhou, Guangdong Chaozhou, Shantou, and other places. The sea passage was loaded from the docks in the upper reaches of Tong'an Xixi, and the silk road along the coast was sold to Southeast Asia and the world. The pickers brought matches and other foreign goods from the "Hai Silk Road", as well as the daily necessities needed by the seafood and salt people, the pickers then picked up from Tong'an back to Daping and other places.
During the Qing Dynasty, the Xiping Yaoyang tea merchants who traveled to and from the ancient road proposed that all tea merchants raise funds and donate silver dollars, from the foot of Aoling to the stone steps of Aolingtou, and set up a number of stations on the tea village ancient road to provide tea and snacks. TaizaiLing, which is at the junction of Anxi and Anxi, originally had a rain stop, but now the rain pavilion has collapsed, and only half of the square boundary monument remains.
A quiet old street hidden in an ancient house, "Little Shanghai", appears like a tunnel of time in Daping Township. On the exquisite arcade buildings that merchants had to pass through in ancient times, the mottled shop name signs reveal the prosperity of the past.
In the 28th year of the Republic of China (1939), after the opening of the "Antong Highway", this ancient road was gradually neglected and gradually abandoned.
In the townships along this ancient road, there are many legends about the origin of oolong tea, and today we will first talk about the "hairy crab".
When it comes to hairy crabs, ninety-nine percent of people think of hairy crabs in Yangcheng Lake. The hair crab mentioned in this article refers to the famous species of Anxi oolong tea - hair crab tea.
Oolong famous species hairy crab tea
The origin legend of hair crab tea originally published in the "Chinese Folk Tales Integration - Fujian Volume - Anxi Sub-Volume":
Half-Walled Hairy Crab
During the Guangxu period of the Qing Dynasty, there was a young tea called Gaokeng in Fumei Village, Daqiulun Tea Mountain. One day, on the half wall outside the house, he found a small tea tree growing out of the middle of the wall. Gao Pit felt strange, he thought: There are tea trees that grow in stones, and there are also those that grow at the foot of the wall, but I have never seen them grow out of the cracks in the walls. The more he thought about it, the more strange it became, so he took a ladder. Climb up and take a closer look. He felt that the little tea tree was neither like "TieGuanyin", nor like "Huang He, nor like "Benshan". He thinks it should be taken care of, carefully cultivated, and figured out what kind of tea it is.
The following spring, Takakeng decided to dig up the tea trees on the wall. So he asked his wife to bring a basin of water, climbed up the ladder himself, wet the roots of the tea tree with water, and dug down the wall soil and the tea tree with a knife, and carefully moved it to the tea garden to cut the seeds. Gao Keng looked after this xeno tea tree like a baby, watering it himself every morning and evening, and watching it carefully for a while.
After a year, the small tea plant grew taller. Gao Pit Variety Is Very Experienced, and the tip of the main bud is removed all year round, so that the side buds grow longer and longer. When it came time to pick spring tea in the third year, he picked the buds of this tea tree and fried them separately. Baked well, high pit taste, feel the color and fragrance are very good. He invited neighbors to taste, and everyone unanimously praised it as a good tea, believing that although it was not as good as the charm of "Tieguanyin" tea and the fragrance of "Huanghe" tea, it had a popcorn-like caramelized aroma, unique charm, and very resistant to bubbles, which can be regarded as a new variety of oolong tea.
Word soon spread in the township about the cultivation of strange tea trees in Gaokeng, and many tea farmers in the vicinity came to ask for breeding and planting. But this tea does not yet have a name. Everyone asked what the name of the high pit was going to be, and he invited the neighbor's tea farmer to come and discuss it. Some people say that this tea tree is like a crab climbing from the ground to the middle of the wall, which is called a crab, right? Some people say that there are many white fine hairs on the back of the tea leaves, which is called a monkey, right? In the end, it was agreed that this tea leaf had serrations on the side and fine hairs on the bud core, which originally grew on the half wall, like the crab's feet with fine hairs, and was named "hair crab". Since then, people have called this tea "hair crab tea".
The story of "hairy crab tea growing out of half the wall" is also widely spread in the area of Anxi Daping Town and Huqiu Town.
Narrator: Gao Fengjin
Finisher: Chen Kezhen
Collection time: November 1988
Tips
Compared with other teas, Anxi hair crab tea has a higher content ratio of manganese, iron, fluorine, potassium and sodium than other teas, especially with high fluoride content, ranking first among all teas, which has a significant effect on the prevention and treatment of caries and elderly osteoporosis. In 1979 and 1984, Japan twice set off the "oolong tea fever", and Anxi hair crab tea was known as "beauty tea" and "slimming tea". Anxi hair crab tea has a high selenium content and ranks first among the six major tea categories. Selenium can stimulate immune proteins and antibodies to resist disease, inhibit the occurrence and development of cancer cells.