The ruts of history, the distant backs. That section of the Wanli Tea Road is cold and warm, and it is still passed on by word of mouth. The starting point of the Wanli tea trade is still playing out a new story. This bluestone road stretches and stretches out into the distance...
Yanglou Cave is located in Songfeng Mountain, about 26 kilometers southwest of Chibi City, Hubei Province, which is the key to the junction of Hunan Province, Hubei and Gansu Provinces, and is one of the 6 ancient towns of Chibi in the Ming and Qing Dynasties, the origin of Songfeng tea, known as the "hometown of brick tea".
There is an ancient street in Yangloudong Town, which is mainly based on Ming and Qing Dynasty buildings, with a width of about 4 meters and a length of about 2200 meters, accompanied by several T-shaped alleys. The construction area of the ancient street is 0.7 square kilometers. The streets are paved entirely of bluestone. The "chicken buses" that have transported tea in the past have crushed the stone slabs into more than inches of deep grooves. At the foot of Songfeng Mountain in the southeast of the street, there is a famous spring of Guanyin, and the water quality is clear and mellow, which is the source of water for refining famous teas in the past.
Since the Tang Dynasty, Yangloudong's "medicinal black tea" has become famous. In the middle of the Ming Dynasty, the tea industry in Yangloudong was quite developed. For more than 200 years from the Ming and Qing dynasties, Yangloudong brick tea has been exported to many European countries. During the Qianlong period of the Qing Dynasty, Jin merchants opened tea houses in Yangloudong, of which "Sanyuchuan" and "Jushengchuan" two tea houses sold Yangloudong brick tea to the European market in large quantities.
Wanli Tea Road, which first originated in Xiamei Village at the foot of Wuyi Mountain, a steady stream of Wuyi tea through the waterway, all the way to the north, through the Jiangxi waterway, to Hankou along the Yangtze River, and then through the Han River all the way north, through Xiangyang into the Central Plains, across the Taihang Mountains and Shanxi Plateau, Yanmen Pass, Killing Tiger Pass, north through the Mongolian steppe, in the border tea trade port Kyakhta slightly transit, all the way to distant Russia and Western Europe. Due to the outbreak of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom Movement, Jiangxi and Hunan were occupied by the Taiping Army, and the starting point of the Tea Road was turned to Yangloudong, the hometown of Hubei Green Bricks. It became the starting point of the new Wanli Tea Road. At that time, more than 200 tea houses such as Jin merchants and Russian merchants made this thousand-year-old town go to the peak, and also created the Chinese time-honored brand "Chuan" brand brick tea.
The Russians do not understand the Chinese, through the packaging to touch the inside, if there are three bars, it is proved that it is a Sichuan brand Chinese green brick tea, there is also an iron quality guarantee
Sichuan brand impression
The carved beams and paintings of the Jinshang mansion are enough to show the strength of the family's assets
Lei family compound
The modern Opium War was essentially a tea war, and in order to obtain Chinese tea more cheaply, the great powers achieved their goal by continuously transporting opium.
Chinese tried to prevent Europeans from smuggling opium into our country, the tenacious sons and daughters of China rose up in resistance, and Lin Zexu carried out gunfire at Humen, triggering the outbreak of the First Opium War. Since then, China has entered the humiliating stage of modernization. The Opium War directly led to foreign trade between the five Chinese families. Guangzhou, Xiamen, Fuzhou and Shanghai were later known as ports for the tea trade.
Tea leaves are fermented
Subsequently, for the sake of greater tea economic profits, the Western colonial powers were not satisfied with plundering resources in coastal cities, and directly penetrated the colonial claws deep into the hinterland of China, forcing the Qing government to sign the Sino-British Treaty of Tianjin and the Sino-Russian Beijing Treaty one after another, opening up Jiujiang, Hankou and other inland cities along the river, and forcing the Qing government to carry out tea trade in Kyakhta on the Sino-Russian border.
After understanding the generalization of Chinese tea, it is not difficult to find that Hankou is the most famous tea inland port in modern China, known as the "Oriental Tea Port". Jiujiang is the first thoroughfare to enter the Yangtze River after Wading through the Mountains and Rivers of Wuyi Tea. At the same time, porcelain was also continuously transported to all parts of the world through this tea road. Based on the fanatical demand for tea, China's national gates were slowly opened by this leaf of the East.
The ruts of history, the distant backs. That section of the Wanli Tea Road is cold and warm, and it is still passed on by word of mouth. The starting point of the Wanli tea trade is still playing out a new story. This bluestone road stretches and stretches out into the distance...