When she first saw me before, she had smiled and persuaded, "You can go and see it, it doesn't matter if you don't buy it." At this moment, I made it clear that I would not buy it, and she immediately changed her face and took my arm again and did not let go: "You look again, look again." The man who was drying tea on the side also stood up straight, his eyes slightly warning, and looked at me.
I was a little embarrassed, looked around, and there was no passerby passing by, so I immediately said: "I can pay for the tea!" She took my hand and relaxed a little, "You will definitely lose money if you go outside to buy... Tell me, how much you can pay for tea? "I put down 15 bucks and she finally let go of my hand.
Text | Xu Qing
Edit | Golden turn
Operational | To the multiplicity
1
In August last year, Jia Qing, a post-95 boy, traveled to Hangzhou alone and encountered a magical deception led by three grandmothers.
Jia Qing has an easy-going personality and likes to "go with the flow", before the trip, he did not make a detailed strategy, but roughly planned to go to the Lingyin Temple first, and then buy some tea leaves to bring back.
The weather was hot, at the bus stop near the train station, he first met the first grandmother, suggesting that he change the route, do not go to the Lingyin Temple, but "go to the Nine Streams to play in the water", cool and then go to the nearby Longjing village to buy tea; then, at the transfer station, he met the second grandmother, told him to go to the local tea farmer's home to buy authentic tea; subsequently, he was taken to a tea shop by the grandmother, the third grandmother has been waiting for a long time, she took out two kinds of tea, calling one "Longjing before the rain", One was "Longjing after the rain", which brewed two cups for Jia Qing. After 10 minutes, Jia Qing, who knew very little about tea, spent 700 yuan to buy a pound of tea.
This experience is like a relay race, three grandmothers stick after stick, and finally pass Jia Qing to the finish line. Afterwards, he felt that something was wrong, searched the Internet, saw posts of similar experiences, and learned that he was involved in an elaborate "tea sales contest". Jia Qing was annoyed, but also felt helpless, after all, "they are really too clever."
The cleverness begins with the grandmothers' appearance: they have gray hair, sneakers on their feet, and a cloth pocket for grocery shopping in their hands, and they look like they are just going out to the market.
The second is their patience, every grandmother has just the right enthusiasm, the topic cuts from the direction, and then a small talk that has nothing to do with tea leaves, so that Jia Qing can relax her vigilance. They maintained a casual and calm attitude to persuade Jia Qing until he entered the tea shop.
Looking at dozens of related posts on the Internet, Jia Qing found that the experience of netizens was similar to his, but most of them only met one grandmother, not as rich as him. As for the "Longjing tea" he bought at a high price, it eventually became "Schrödinger's tea" – how much it was worth, only God knows.
2
In order to experience such a "subtle" tea scam in Jia Qing's post, this Qingming Festival holiday, I went to Hangzhou.
It is the season of spring tea picking, the "Longjing Tea Shop" is common on both sides of the road in the city, and when you walk in, someone will tell the history of Longjing tea: According to legend, when the Qianlong Emperor went down to Jiangnan, he once went to the Hugong Temple under the Shifeng Mountain in Longjing Village to taste the West Lake Longjing Tea, praised it, and sealed the eighteen tea trees in front of the temple as "Imperial Tea".
▲ The legendary eighteen "Ocha". Figure/cfp
In the last century, the price of Longjing tea has risen, and impersonation is not uncommon. In 2008, GB18650-2008 "Geographical Indication Product Longjing Tea" was officially implemented, which determined the quality standards of Longjing tea and also divided into three major production areas: West Lake Production Area, Hangzhou Production Area, and Shaoxing Production Area.
In the West Lake production area, according to the geographical location of tea plant growth, tea is divided into "Shifeng Longjing", "West Lake Longjing" and "Meiwu Longjing", of which "Shifeng Longjing" is the most expensive, some connoisseurs told me that its price is more than 5,000 yuan per kilogram, and Longjing Village is its largest production area.
I first went to the starting point of Jia Qing's trip: the railway station. In my imagination, the train station was the hardest hit area for the grandmother, but what I didn't expect was that I hung around there for more than two hours, and even took the initiative to talk to all the haunting grandmothers, who either spoke the Hangzhou dialect, which I couldn't understand at all, or ignored me, so cold that I didn't look like a liar at all.
Another grandmother appeared, and I immediately stepped forward and asked, "Do you know where to buy tea?" The little granddaughter on the side pulled the corner of Grandma's clothes and signaled her to ignore me, and the two of them quickly walked away, and the granddaughter muttered: "Is it a liar?" ”
Looking for a liar and being treated like a liar makes me want to cry a little. Two hours later, I began to wonder if this grandma scam had disappeared. But by the time I left the train station and got into a taxi, the scam finally came to light.
I told the taxi driver that I was going to Longjing Village, and the originally silent driver heard that I was going to buy tea leaves, and suddenly turned into a "talker". In between waiting for the traffic lights, he picked up the thermos cup in his hand and signaled to me: "West Lake Longjing, a pound of 2,000 pieces, I buy four or five pounds a year." "There is pride in the words.
In addition to laying the price for me, the driver also tentatively asked me how much I wanted to buy, making a righteous posture: "You tell me how much to buy, and if you buy more, I will let him give you a discount!" At the same time, he also told me that I could look at it slowly, "I stopped the billing meter, it doesn't cost money, you buy it and I'll take you back." ”
After passing through a tunnel, the distant ring of mountains and large tea fields come into view, and the car turns into a path and stops, where two tea houses called "Longjing Qingcha" are located. The driver took me into one of them, the only table was two plates of tea, a thirty-year-old person who looked like a lady came out and introduced me, the tea on the left was 750 yuan a pound, and the right side was 1,000 yuan a pound. She skillfully took out two teacups and squeezed a handful of them to make two cups for me, asking me to "feel the difference between the two teas."
▲ On the only table in the store are two plates of tea leaves and a cup of brewed tea. Photo / Photo by Xu Qing
A jar of tea two two, 150 yuan, for the sake of paraphrase, I still bought a can. After letting the driver go first, I asked the lady who bought the tea: "Is the driver who pulled me cooperating with you?" She also did not hide: "Win-win, he can make two money by picking up and dropping off guests, and we have free tea to drink here." Not long after, another group of new guests who were brought into the tea shop, perhaps worried that I would leak "business opportunities", the hostess saw that I had no intention of leaving after buying tea, so she simply took my cup to the outdoor table and politely "invited" me out.
Looking at this new wave of tourists, I couldn't help but feel a little sympathy, but soon, I was "punched in the face" - it turned out that I was the clown, thinking that I had seen through the "routine", in fact, there was a deeper "routine" waiting for me.
After walking a few hundred meters down the village path, an aunt I met pulled me into the house and asked me to see her tea leaves. During the conversation, she told me that I did not buy West Lake Longjing. The two tea shops at the mouth of the village, one opened by outsiders, one by people from another village 20 kilometers away, they rented the houses of local villagers, the annual rent is as high as 600,000, and the rebate to the driver can be 60%.
She asked me to compare the tea I had just bought with her family's Longjing tea, "The tea leaves in the field are turquoise in color, the leaves are large, the real Longjing tea is small, green with yellow, not so good-looking." She also took out a small cloth bag containing a stack of anti-counterfeiting stickers from "West Lake Longjing". Her family has three acres of land, the yield of tea per acre is about 40 catties, the number will become less after frying, a total of 120 125g specifications of anti-counterfeiting standards, "only the locals of Twin Peaks Village can go to the village committee to get it."
I glanced at the tea leaves I had just bought, and sure enough, there were no anti-counterfeiting stickers. Wait, Twin Peaks? "What village?" I asked. My aunt looked at me with sympathy: "Little girl, you are so naïve. "I opened the Baidu map depressedly, and found that this is not the Longjing Village I was going to, Longjing Village is at the top of the mountain, and here is only the Twin Peaks Village halfway up the mountainside - I was completely deceived by the taxi driver."
▲ The real "West Lake Longjing" and "Shifeng Longjing" have anti-counterfeiting labels. Photo / Photo by Xu Qing
At this time, it was 4 p.m., standing in Twin Peaks Village, I was full of mixed feelings, watching one car after another coming, the assembly line was the same: stop, release people, buy tea, leave, and repeat the same set of processes. I don't know if these people, like me, originally wanted to go to Longjing Village, but as a result, they were taken to Twin Peaks Village and bought a bunch of tea leaves that they didn't know where they came from.
3
After leaving Twin Peaks Village, I still didn't have a dead heart and wanted to go to the real Longjing Village to find out.
When I really walked on the main road of Longjing Village, I couldn't help but blossom in my heart - here are all the "gray-haired, silver or jade bracelets on their hands, looking kind and enthusiastic grandmothers" described by Jia Qing, they are scattered in tea shops, small roads and alleys, and when someone passes by, they will come forward and ask: "Do you want my family to go and see tea?" ”
Here, too, scams become more obscure.
Divided into two solar terms of Qingming and Guyu, Longjing tea is divided into "Mingqian", "Minghou", "Before rain", "After rain", "Mingqian" has the best quality, and the highest selling price can reach thousands of yuan to tens of thousands of yuan a catty. In the last century, the Tea Research Institute of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences researched a new variety of Longjing No. 43, in addition to the large yield, 1/3 more than the old tea trees (also known as "group species") in the past, and its mining time was about 10 days earlier than the old tea plants, which also relatively reduced the price of Longjing tea.
Locals told me that because the cost of growing tea, picking tea and roasting tea is too high, even the newly picked and newly fried No. 43 tea tree on the same day, if you want to make money, you have to sell at least 750 yuan a catty. But in the tea shops in Longjing Village, 200, 300, 400 pounds of tea are very common.
After 5 minutes, an aunt took my arm and led me deep into the alley. The same plot as Twin Peaks village is staged again: two bamboo plates, two tea leaves, two tea cups. The difference is only pricing, the left side of a pound 400, the right side of 600 a pound, she repeatedly suggested to me, "buy 400, cost-effective", but also compared to me "3" and "5" gestures, indicating "if you buy more, you can give you this number".
When asked if these teas were Shifeng Longjing, she asked, "What else can there be in Shifeng Longjing?" I said that there is no anti-counterfeiting standard, and she looked at me suspiciously: "This is the government regulation, more than 1,000 pieces of tea have anti-counterfeiting standards, do you understand?" This is a government regulation. ”
▲ The same routine, or two kinds of tea leaves for you to brew first, there is no anti-counterfeiting label, but there is a "special packaging bag". Photo / Photo by Xu Qing
Later, I asked two tea shops, and a grandmother told me that her tea was divided into three prices of 300, 500 and 800, "all of which are Shifeng Longjing". When I asked if there were any better quality tea leaves, she found a small cloth bag, "This 2,000 yuan a pound." And the village mouth of the family, an uncle called his own Shifeng Longjing 5,000 yuan a pound, I asked him, how other families have cheap tea, he said cryptically: "Every year, the output of Shifeng Longjing is so much, those 300, 400 pounds of tea, I don't know what it is." ”
▲ Every tea house in Longjing Village sells "West Lake Longjing" and "Shifeng Longjing", which are directly packed in yellow plastic bags in the back. Photo / Photo by Xu Qing
That afternoon, I was wandering around, empty-handed, and two women who had been soliciting guests on the road crossed the road and shouted to me disapprovingly: "I have walked several laps, can I buy it in the end?" ”
After returning from Longjing Village, I contacted Jia Qing through the post, and he told me about the second half of the magic scam: the day after learning that he had been deceived, he went to the bus stop again, and after waiting for less than half an hour, two of the grandmothers he met actually appeared together.
After taking pictures of the two grandmothers, he resolutely embarked on the road to defend his rights in Longjing Village. Because the evidence was in hand, it was impossible to argue, and in the end, the tea shop owner returned the money to him.
4
Before leaving Hangzhou, I asked a friend to introduce several villagers from Shuangfeng Village and Longjing Village, and finally figured out the origin of the scam in the two villages.
Years ago, the Longjing tea scam was seasonal. Spring in Hangzhou is recognized as the most beautiful season, when spring passes, tourists plummeted, the grandmother of Longjing Village will form a team to go out to pull guests, "idle is also idle, it is better to make some money."
The villagers of Twin Peaks Village also corroborated this statement: "The scam 20 years ago was very exaggerated, I went to school when I was a child, and there were a bunch of old ladies in Longjing Village on the bus, who bought monthly passes and came out every day to solicit guests, and every stop of the No. 27 bus at that time was a person there." ”
Most of the "grandma scams" on the Internet also occurred 5 years ago. In recent years, the younger generation of Longjing villagers have gone out to work, not only the technology of growing tea, picking tea, and roasting tea is facing loss, but the "grandmother" will also have no successor.
When Jia Qing returned to Longjing Village to defend his rights, the tea shop owner explained that the grandmothers were responsible for soliciting customers, and when the tea was sold, they would get 20% paid. Originally, his own tea has always sold well, and he has not used this method to attract customers for many years, but in 2020, due to the impact of the epidemic, sales fell sharply, and he "repeated the same mistakes".
The scam of impersonating Longjing Village in Twin Peaks Village is more because of the plight of tea sales.
A villager told me that although Twin Peaks Village produces "West Lake Longjing", external publicity has always been a problem, and it is the least famous in several natural villages in the West Lake production area, and there is not even an obvious sign and billboard at the mouth of the village, and the only tour guide stone stele is broken for an unknown amount of time. A shuangfeng villager who runs a tea shop in the city said: "Every time I talk to others about Longjing tea, everyone only knows Wengjiashan, Longjing Village, and Manjuelong, but they don't know Shuangfeng Village at all, thinking that I am fooling around." ”
He also told me that after outsiders opened a tea shop in Twin Peaks Village, it can be said that it is even worse, and they will deliberately prevent tourists from contacting local villagers, so that tourists do not know that they have bought fake tea leaves in Twin Peaks Village, and they cannot find that this is not Longjing Village.
▲ Outside the door of the tea shop opened by outsiders, a teacher is brewing tea. Inside the door are tourists brought by taxi drivers sipping tea. Photo / Photo by Xu Qing
Such a scam is well known in the village and has existed for more than a decade, but "no one can handle it". On the one hand, the business permits handled by outsiders are written on the "Longjing Tea", not "West Lake Longjing", and the rent of the villagers' houses is also legal and compliant; on the other hand, the local villagers have also acquiesced to this behavior because of the high rent and considerable flow of people.
There are always "fish that slip through the net" into the village, are pulled to the home by the locals to "popularize science", and buy the real West Lake Longjing; or go into the restaurant to consume, create revenue for the village, and the money can eventually fall into the wallet of each villager.
On the afternoon of departure, there was still an endless stream of tourists, and every bus was full. Looking at it, the taxi queue reached 34, and in desperation, I had to walk down the mountain, and when I reached twin peaks village halfway up the mountain, I finally stopped a taxi.
The driver was another uncle, and after picking me up, he kept asking me if I had bought tea and how much I had bought. Knowing that I had already bought it, he still said excitedly, "Filial piety! Bring it back to your father to drink, so what do you bring to your mother? He almost snapped his hands on the steering wheel: "Bring silk!" You know the Silk Museum, right? We passed by in a moment, 15% off, and there was no activity for the late day! I'll stop the watch later, it doesn't cost you money, you go buy it, I'll wait for you okay..."
Tired, I immediately became refreshed, remembering another post I had read on the Internet: young children were taken to the "Silk Museum" by the driver, and when they arrived at the place, they found that it was a "silk factory store", where the silk texture was rough, but the price was ridiculously high, and a short-sleeved top was more than a thousand yuan.
It turned out that this driver was also a "childcare". I was really deceived enough during this experience, so I racked my brains and thought of 3 reasons: I was too tired to play, someone was waiting for me, and my mother didn't like silk. The driver finally gave up persuasion, silently stepped on the accelerator, and left Longjing Village at full speed.
The article is the original of the daily people, and the infringement must be investigated.