Wuyishan not only has good quality tea, but also has a long history of tea culture and tea customs.
Xiao Zhi and his party recently went to Wuyi Mountain to select a wave of good rock tea for everyone, since they arrived in Wuyi Mountain, Xiao Zhi will talk about some local tea customs in Wuyi Mountain for everyone to help everyone better understand the Wuyi Mountain Tea culture.
01
Fighting tea
Tea fighting competition, also known as Tea Fighting in ancient times, flourished in the Tang Dynasty and flourished in the Song Dynasty, which is a kind of tea activity to evaluate the quality of tea.
Wuyishan tea fighting customs have a long history, as early as the Song Dynasty, Wuyishan tea fighting activities have become a common practice, from the princes and nobles to the peddlers and pawns, all of which are happy.
Su Shi once wrote in a poem: "Millet buds by wuyi creek, before Ding and after Cai Xianglong added." Compete for new favors, this year's dou pin chong official tea."
In the Yuan Dynasty, Wuyishan established the Imperial Tea Garden, in which Wuyi Stone Milk Tea DouCha won and became a tribute to Longfeng Tea.
Folk tea fighting has also become a kind of interesting tea activity, and the Yuan Dynasty painter Zhao Mengfu's "Tea Fighting Diagram" vividly reflects the folk tea fighting activities at that time.
Nowadays, the tea fighting competition is still a grand event held in Wuyishan every year, such as the Star Village Tea King Competition, the Spring Tea Review Competition, the Tianxin Villagers Tea Fighting Competition, etc., the contestants compete to come up with their own proud works, good tea takes turns to appear, so that you can drink uninterrupted from morning to night, if you go to Wuyi Mountain, you must not miss the Tea Fighting Competition.
02
Tea with wedding
Tea and wedding began with Princess Wencheng in the Tang Dynasty, who brought tea leaves to Tibet as a dowry when Princess Wencheng entered Tibet.
The reason why the ancients combined tea with marriage is because they believe that tea plants cannot be transplanted, the so-called "tea does not move the original, plant will give birth to children", with tea as a gift, means from one end to the end, do not change their aspirations.
During the Song Dynasty, tea changed from a dowry for women to a dowry for men to propose to women.
During the Yuan and Ming dynasties, the tea ceremony gradually became synonymous with marriage, and the dowry of women was called eating tea.
During the Qing Dynasty, this concept of tea ceremony was still continued, for example, in "Dream of the Red Chamber", Wang Xifeng let Lin Daiyu drink tea and joked: "Since you have eaten our family's tea, why don't you make our family a daughter-in-law?" Lin Daiyu's face was flushed and she didn't say a word.
Nowadays, some areas in Wuyishan also make engagement and marriage into tea and eat tea, and the deposit for engagement is called tea gold, and there are also cups of tea, hehe tea, or xie en tea and recognition tea offered to the parents of both parties.
03
Shout mountains, open mountains
For thousands of years, Wuyi Camellia people have had an important ritual before picking tea - shouting mountain tea sacrifice.
The so-called Shouting Mountain originates from a ritual held in the Wuyishan Imperial Tea Garden during the ancient Song and Yuan Dynasties.
Every year, when the sting is startled, the officials of the Imperial Tea Garden will climb the platform to worship the tea god, and then beat the golden drum and set off firecrackers, while shouting "tea sprouts, tea sprouts".
Nowadays, before wuyishan picks tea every year, local tea farmers, tea enterprises, and tea merchants will spontaneously hold a shouting ceremony to pray for this year's tea harvest.
Opening the mountain means that the tea leaves will begin to be picked. On the day of the opening of the mountain, the tea factory workers got up at dawn, and after washing, they began to burn incense to worship the tea ancestor of Wuyi Mountain, Yang Taibai, and prayed that the tea ancestor would bless the picking smoothly.