Four words, let Britain give China a few memories

The great career planner - Zhenzki Sodevsky once said that "you can never wake up a dozing person unless you give him a cup of milk tea", and in history there was an emperor who dozed off, said four words, and completely transformed the tea industry of the Ming Dynasty, he is - Zhu Yuanzhang.

However, he did not know these four words

One: provided the first pot of gold for the cause of British trade hegemony hundreds of years later

Two: sowed gunpowder for the Sino-British Opium War

In 1391, Zhu Yuanzhang, who worked every day, was rarely sleepy, so he asked his subordinates to make him a cup of dragon and phoenix tea.

(Dragon and Phoenix Group Tea: Royal Special Afternoon Tea, Song Weizong's favorite top good tea, the prosperity of this dynasty, the tribute of the year building stream, the dragon and phoenix group cake, the name of the world)

I didn't expect that an hour had passed and the tea had not been brewed, but it was no wonder to others, after all, making tea was very troublesome, there were nine steps, and finally you had to pull flowers. (1. Crushed tea, 2. Herbal tea, 3. Luo tea, 4. Tea end box, 5. Pick the end of Yu Zhao, 6. Order tea, 7. Stir tea powder, 8. Set tea tray) More angry things, Zhu Yuanzhang waited for so long, a sip of tea belly, tea has no tea taste, but also a mouthful of additive taste, tea added a lot of miscellaneous things.

The ministers believed that the more complex the tea making, the more noble it was. However, Zhu Yuanzhang started with a bowl, favoring civilian loose tea, when the Ming Dynasty was in ruins, Zhu Yuanzhang wanted to let the people recuperate and put an end to extravagance, so start with tea. So in this annoying situation, he proposed a four-character mantra: Waste the group and disperse.

Taizu used heavy labor to strike the dragon regiment, and everywhere he picked buds to advance. - Zhu Yuanzhang

So far, loose tea in the Ming Dynasty has completed three popular trends

1. Making tea is simpler and less costly.

2. Ordinary people drink good tea.

3. The amount of loose tea has skyrocketed.

From the original three or four to ninety-six, in these ninety-six teas, black tea and other fermentation began to become popular, rising, Zhu Yuanzhang could not have imagined that black tea, a fermented tea suitable for long-distance transportation, changed the pattern of the old world and swept the world.

In the 18th century, Britain carried out the first industrial revolution, the worker group was just born from the field to the factory to move bricks, workers need Kain every day to refresh their lives, at that time there were two choices on the market coffee and black tea, workers and the British government did not hesitate to choose black tea.

The reason is straightforward:

1. Cheap, coffee at that time was only affordable to the upper class and elite.

2. Convenient, at that time, coffee had to be roasted, grinded, brewed and a series of processes in the café.

3. Degreasy, black tea with butter bread, a must-have for breakfast and afternoon tea.

The fourth reason is the most important, European people use tea as a medicine, which can cure gallstones and constipation.

The land is strong, the wind is hot, and the people use beef and mutton as rations every day, which is not easy to digest, if there is no rhubarb, the stool is not smooth, and the people will be suffocated alive. Therefore, after each meal, rhubarb tea should be used as a miracle medicine for the intestines. One by one

The British government chose tea, the reason is simpler, defeat the Netherlands + make money, at that time the Dutch East India Company was the European hegemon, monopolized the coffee market to make a lot of money, in addition to buying coffee at a high price with the big brother Holland, the little minions Britain can not intervene in the coffee trade, can only sneak into the less competitive oriental tea trade, set up the British East India Company, travel to China to buy tea back to Europe to sell at a high price.

No one expected that in the era of the Industrial Revolution, a magical ancient oriental leaf became one of the trump cards of the British counterattack to defeat the European hegemon, how much the British relied on black tea from the past to the present?

Every British tank was equipped with a teapot, and the British in the Battle of Normandy were almost destroyed for tea. As expected in the UK, there are more and more workers drinking tea, coupled with the main coffee producing areas one by one Sri Lanka, the outbreak of "leaf rust" epidemic, coffee trees died in batches, the amount of coffee decreased sharply, the amount of tea skyrocketed, Chinese tea defeated coffee, in Europe in short supply, with numbers, that is, 1700-1823, Europe and the United States, Export 170 million taels of silver to China, Britain contributed 53 million taels of silver, but the next number makes Britain want to cry, Britain needs Chinese tea to obtain huge profits, but China does not need British products, huge amount of silver foreign exchange flows into China, Britain's trade deficit with China is as high as 35%-40%, in order to solve this dilemma, Britain sells opium to China, in order to kill this drug that keeps the Chinese people awake, Daoguang Emperor sent Lin to destroy opium.

Selling opium is a huge profit, British businessmen can not obediently take out opium, the first day is really very bleak, Lin Zexu only searched for 5 boxes of opium, the second day, Lin Zexu changed a method: take the British businessman's favorite tea to exchange for opium! 1 box of opium for 5 kilograms of tea received 1150 boxes of opium on the same day, and finally Lin Zexu destroyed all the 21306 boxes of opium collected in Humen, which is the little-known "using tea to control and destroy", which appeared earlier than "mastering and destroying by mastering and destroying".

This good show of exchanging tea for opium provoked the unhappiness of Britain, and the Opium War was about to break out, when the Daoguang Emperor firmly believed that Britain would not go to war.

Although the door to China's trade was opened by force, Britain still could not solve the trade deficit dilemma, because Chinese tea was too good to sell, so Britain decided to grow its own tea, Britain has no land and no seeds, the key is no technology! For thousands of years, the exclusive core technology of tea making has been in the hands of China, how did Britain, which cannot produce tea, replace China as the hegemon of the world tea trade?

This is related to a tea thief, who single-handedly handled the largest intellectual property theft case in modern history, and the spy sent by the British was called Fujun, who gave himself the Chinese name Flowers.

At that time, China strictly forbade foreigners to enter the Chinese tea area, flowers were transformed into Qing Dynasty and Mongols, under the leadership of the locals, they entered the Anhui, Fujian, Ningbo tea areas, flowers will be tens of thousands of tea plants and seeds, smuggled into the British colony in three batches, an Indian Assam tea garden planting, the last batch he personally led, Chinese tea making core technical equipment, tea plants and eight tea workers, secretly left the country to India Assam tea park, and finally successfully cultivated British fine tea Darjeeling tea, and used this technique in other colonial tea gardens. In this way, the Chinese tea industry was forced to complete the illegal migration, British black tea stole the intellectual property rights of Chinese tea, and promoted to the world to replace China as the world tea trade hegemon, and the Qing led by the Daoguang Emperor lost its tea advantage and quickly lost its imperial glory.