Huizhou tea is the epitome of Chinese tea, a cup of clear tea soup is full of sophistication, sipping bitterness and sweetness. It prospers in comfort and decays in a chaotic world, but once there is room for breathing, there is always someone to restore and pass on. This is the cultural foundation that flows in the blood.
The main writer | Yang Lu
Photography | Cai Xiaochuan
<h1>A famous tea in a deep alpine valley</h1>
Chinese always talk about "good tea from high mountain clouds and mist", and Taiping Monkey Kui is no exception. Standing on the top of the tea mountain to meet the sunrise, it is like being in a fairyland, the turquoise forest stretches out to meet the rolling clouds, and at the end of the sea of clouds is the golden edge of the sun. Cai Xiaochuan, a fellow photojournalist, came in the spring of 2009 when he first sailed across Taiping Lake by boat and then took a tractor for more than half an hour to enter the village. Although the road was built in 2012, it is still inconvenient to enter the village. We had to change to a van at the production team where the village committee was located at the bottom of the hill and snake up again. The road was too narrow to accommodate two long, narrow vans running side by side, and from time to time they had to stop and retreat to a slightly wider place to make way for the cars coming down from above.
The idea that the outside vehicles cannot go up the mountain is the idea of Fang Jifan, the national non-hereditary heir of Taiping Monkey Kui and the village director and secretary of Monkey Pit Village. One is because the mountain road is indeed narrow, and he has to take a van up the hill to take his VIPs to visit the tea plantation. The other is to protect the authenticity of the Taiping Monkey Kui. Taiping Monkey Kui this year's purchase price in the core production area of the mountain reached 6,000 yuan a catty, in order to prevent someone from destroying the market reputation with shoddy charging, simply put an end to the possibility of fresh leaves and dried tea on the mountain.
The fame of the Taiping Monkey Kui was further improved after 1949. It is selected as the national ceremonial tea, and after the opening of the park in mid-to-late April every year, the Ministry of Public Security will come to monkey pit to purchase, and the tea leaves will be directly sealed. The tea leaves must be delivered to Beijing by May 1, because they will be used to entertain Chinese and foreign guests on the upcoming May Day. The common local saying is that when Nixon visited China in 1972, he was served a drink by the Taiping Monkey Kui, and Premier Zhou Enlai gave him a bag.
Huizhou tea is the epitome of Chinese tea, and a bowl of tea soup is full of human feelings and etiquette. The picture shows Wang Hao and Jia Yingsong
Unlike the green tea we are familiar with, the Taiping Monkey Kui is as long as a finger and the leaves are square, like some kind of vegetable that is neatly cut and dehydrated, and they are stacked vertically into the bottom of the glass to soak in water, and like swaying aquatic plants. Zheng Zhongming, a non-hereditary inheritor of The Taiping Monkey Kui Anhui Province, said: "The top ten famous teas in the history of our country are either bud tea or old tea. Monkey Kui is very special, it is a mature tea leaf, the richest content. It can be understood that it is neither a bud nor a full bloom, and it is about to be harvested when it is blooming. "Zheng Zhongming casually gave us a handful of fresh leaves in the tea garden, slightly baked in his hand, rubbed it, let us smell, fresh tea leaves are heated by body temperature, and they emit orchid fragrance." They are made into tea leaves and brewed in a cup, and the taste is fresh and strong, with a richness rarely seen in green tea.
It is reasonable to say that this unique and famous tea should have a wide popularity, but this is not the case. Fang Jifan said that he went to Beijing in 1998 to sell Taiping Monkey Kui, and every day he rode his bicycle from Fengtai to MalianDao and asked from shop to shop with a plastic bag of tea. Maliandao is The most famous tea wholesale market in Beijing, bringing together tea varieties from all over the country, but many people do not know Taiping Monkey Kui and ask what kind of dried vegetables it is. Stayed for 17 days and didn't sell a pound. The small production objectively caused the mystery of the Taiping Monkey Kui, and the number of people who had seen the real body was very limited. Its core production areas are the three production teams of Monkey Pit, Monkey Gang and Yan Family. It is not an exaggeration to say that there are few people here, the monkey pit production team has more than twenty households, the other two production teams are only a dozen households, and no one artificially expands the output before, only about 1,000 pounds of Taiping Monkey Kui are produced every year. Zheng Jianxin, a tea culture expert in Huizhou who once worked in the government department, said that in 1985, he went to Taiping County for a meeting, and the organizer of the meeting specially approved that each person was allowed to buy one pound of Taiping Monkey Kui, and the price was his salary for three months. At that time, even if they were willing to spend money to buy good tea, because the output was too small, ordinary people were not qualified to buy.
With the Huangshan Scenic Area at the highest point of Huangshan Mountain as the center, the core production area of Taiping Monkey Kui is in the north, and the core production area of Maofeng in Huangshan Mountain in the south is Fuxi Township in Shexian County.
Like the Taiping Monkey Kui, Huangshan Maofeng was also selected as a state guest tea after 1949, and in 1999 Zhu Rongji visited the United States to visit Jiang Zemin's teacher Gu Yuxuan, and the gift he brought was Huangshan Maofeng. Feng Tao, production director of the "Xie Yuda" tea factory, said that the appearance of the best Huangshan Maofeng should be ivory, with a layer of white clothing, the tea leaves are green and yellow, and the bottom has a gold flake that protects the bud head. This appearance is brought about by the regional characteristics and tea characteristics of the Huangshan area, and there is no way to replicate it elsewhere. "If you see in the market that Huangshan Maofeng is very green, the buds are very neat, it looks fresh and tender, and it looks very high-grade, it is not really Huangshan Maofeng." Feng Tao said.
Unlike other green tea productions, Huangshan Maofeng emphasizes the plant flavor of the tea itself. Feng Tao said that Huangshan Maofeng does not go through the process to add additional aroma. Therefore, Huangshan Maofeng does not have the bean fragrance and chestnut fragrance carried by high temperature Titian, and it is a faint orchid aroma when brewed. Zheng Jianxin said that the best Huangshan Maofeng in history grew in Taohuafeng, Songgu Nunnery, Yungu Temple and other places in the huangshan mountain area, with high altitude, abundant rainfall, and clouds like the sea. However, in order to develop the tourism industry in the 1980s, agricultural production was no longer allowed in the Huangshan Mountain Scenic Area, and tea cultivation stopped. The core production area of the current Huangshan Maofeng is at the foot of Huangshan Mountain, known as the "Four Famous Masters" of Caoxi, Xintian, Chongtouyuan and Gangcun.
How fragrant is the taste of Huangshan Maofeng itself, we visited the tea factory of "Xie Yuda" in Caoxi, the core production area. It is the peak season of spring tea production, tea farmers pick down the mountain fresh leaves piled on the one-story slope conveyor board, just walk to the door, the fragrance of flowers comes to the nose, but also with the indescribable umami taste, the mouth is raw, can not help but swallow saliva. Caoxi people think that using the water here to soak Huangshan Maofeng is authentic, because they drink the mountain spring water of Huangshan Mountain. Zheng Kang, the director of the factory, made us a cup of special tea leaves, and the soup color was very clear and bright, the aroma was fresh, and the taste was tender and smooth. In fact, there is no need to drink so golden, the variety of Huangshan Maofeng is good, the old tea customers drink the special grade third class is very happy, after kneading the tea leaves, the cell wall is broken, more contained substances are dissolved in water, and the taste is thicker.
<h1>Huishang is also a tea merchant</h1>
The core production area of Huangshan Maofeng is larger than that of Taiping Monkey Kui, but picking tea is still not an easy task. Standing in Xie Yu's large tea factory, looking around, the surrounding mountains are full of tea trees, all the way to the top of the mountain. The naturally formed peaks are so steep that it is hard to believe that anyone can stand on them. Zheng Kang said that in order to make more money by picking more buds, farmers set off from their homes at 2 a.m., took miner's lamps up the mountain, and walked for two hours in the distance, even using their hands and feet to climb up. In order to facilitate tea picking and save effort, the locals invented a tea stool like a nail, when picking tea, the bottom of the pointed head is nailed into the soil to fix it, and the person sits on it to avoid the body from sliding down.
Even modern tea plantations are not as uniform as the crops grown in many places, but they are actually in the mountains. Zheng Zhongming in order to expand the production of Taiping Monkey Kui, in other villages in Taiping County bought more than 10,000 acres of land, he is a person who really loves tea, walking among the tea trees will be cheerful and dancing, to introduce us to the miscellaneous tea trees are which flowers and trees, the time of the first flowering every year, how the scenery in the forest is when flowering, but also to squat down at any time to learn all kinds of wild vegetables and wild grasses, let us smell the taste, let us eat raw. He said, "I went into the woods to grow tea. Tea needs diffuse light, less light time, and a large temperature difference between day and night. The soil is weakly acidic. Ecological vegetation should be diverse, you can not be only one tree species, to many kinds of trees, tea can absorb the aroma of these flowers and trees, otherwise the tea leaves are not fragrant. "These intuitive experiences of making tea are summed up by the theory of tea experts, which is the advantage of Huangshan tea production." China's famous tea scientist Wang Zhenheng's research on Huangshan spanned more than half a century, he concluded that Huangshan has many advantages such as "high mountains and valleys with deep clouds like the sea, streams and streams all over the humidity, steep rock slopes and short sunshine, lush forests and good water and soil", therefore, tea has a special love for Huangshan, the three districts and four counties of Huangshan have no tea production, and the famous teas produced are Huangshan Maofeng, Taiping Monkey Kui, Keemun Black Tea and so on.
The hills are steep and the tea stools that farmers use to fix them when picking tea
Tools for the production of Huangshan Maofeng in the past
Huangshan Maofeng is now almost all mechanical tea
This local specialty of tea has nourished the rise of the famous huishang merchants in Chinese history. After the Opium War, five ports of commerce were opened, and the tea industry became the most important industry for Huishang merchants. Zheng Jianxin said that Huishang's tea business is divided into Yangzhuang and Hongzhuang. Yangzhuang specializes in the business of foreigners. Zhan Tianyou, a famous railway engineer in modern times, is a native of Wuyuan, and his ancestors began to sell tea to Guangzhou during the Jiaqing period. After the Opium War, Shanghai and Hankou also opened ports, and Huizhou tea even underwent major changes. The main foreign merchants in Hankou are Russians who love to drink black tea. In order to sell tea to the Russians, Huishang developed Keemun black tea. The tea industry is not limited to Huizhou either. By the end of the Qing Dynasty and the beginning of the People's Republic, most of the well-known tea houses in major cities such as Suzhou, Hangzhou, Nanjing, and Beijing were opened by Huizhou people.
Following the tea business, Huizhou tea has been oriented to the whole country from the beginning, and even the fame of Taiping Monkey Kui and Huangshan Maofeng is also in the tea markets of the big cities of Nanjing and Shanghai. He said that there are few people and many crops there, and the ancestors make a living by selling mountain goods. "At the beginning, there was no traffic in our mountains, and we were all transported by water. Huizhou is divided into two waterways, one is the Qiantang River and the other is the Yangtze River system. We are the southern slope of Huangshan Mountain, taking the Xin'an River into the Yangtze River, selling along the way, to Nanjing, Yangzhou and Zhenjiang. Before liberation, the tea leaves of these cities belonged to taiping county. ”
This market trend came back, and tea farmers first selected fresh leaves with a uniform size of two leaves and one bud when making tea to make high-grade tea. In 1912, Liu Jingzhi, a gentleman of Taiping County, officially named this selected farmhouse tea "Taiping Monkey Kui", and displayed it at the Nanjing Nanyang Persuasion Venue and the Ministry of Agriculture and Commerce, and won the excellent award. In 1915, Liu Jingzhi sent the Taiping Monkey Kui to the Panama International Commodities Exposition and won gold medals and excellent awards. Since then, it has become a famous tea.
Huangshan Maofeng was also created in the late Qing Dynasty, Shexian Caoxi people Xie Zheng'an used the experience of tea processing, on the basis of Huangshan Cloud Mist Tea to improve, his family lives at the foot of Huangshan Mountain, the tea grown nearby is good and tasteful, after brewing, the soup color is clear and yellowish, the taste is mellow, and the aroma is like orchid. Because the shape of the tea leaves is "covered with pekoe, the buds are like peaks" and named "Huangshan Maofeng". Xie Mingzhi, the general manager of Xie Yuda, said that Xie Zheng'an was his grandfather's grandfather, and he heard his family say that this tea was a hit in Shanghai, and the people who drank it were celebrities and rich people at that time, such as Zhang Zhidong. He gave Xie Yu a large inscription: "Sincerely invite guests from all over the world, and be full of Xie Gonglou". Huangshan Maofeng was also favored by British tea merchants, and it was recorded in the "Chronicle of Shexian County": "Huangshan Maofeng, famous for four or five years in Europe. ”
<h1>"Etiquette" in tea soup</h1>
The heyday of Huizhou tea is still a relic. Tunxi Old Street in Huangshan City is a pedestrian street that often appears in travel guides, with more than 300 Huipai buildings of different eras, known as the popular "Qingming River Map". It is the product of the development of Huizhou tea. Huizhou used to be the richest and most prosperous is Ziyang Town in SheXian County and Haiyang Town in Xiuning County, Ketunxi is located at the confluence of the main stream of Xin'an River and Hengjiang River, the main artery of Huizhou waterway traffic, with convenient transportation, tea from six counties in Huizhou, northern Ganzhou and western Zhejiang are traded here.
Zheng Zhongming, a non-hereditary inheritor of the Taiping Monkey Kui Anhui Province
Xie Zheng'an's sixth-generation grandson Xie Mingzhi
By the Republic of China, Tunxi became the economic center and tea capital of Huizhou. Zheng Jianxin said that the bulk green tea drunk by the people of Huizhou and the green tea exported are called "Tun green", which is not a kind of green tea, but the green tea of Xiuning, Shexian, Qimen and other places is collected and processed in Tunxi, including the "Songluo tea" produced by Xiuning since the Ming Dynasty, which also belongs to a kind of Tunlu. Tunxi Old Street is now also an important stage for Huizhou tea, tea estates are lined up, and the most powerful leading enterprises of Anhui tea continue the ancestral habits and have the largest flagship stores on this street.
Huizhou, known as "Southeast Zoulu", is the hometown of Cheng Zhu Lixue. In the rich and stable life formed because of the development of commerce, the Confucian order of liturgy and music is implemented from academic theory to all aspects of life. Tea is a living custom in tea-producing areas and an important medium for etiquette. Zheng Jianxin's mother was one of the first workers in the Keemun Tea Factory after 1949, and several generations of people in the family dealt with tea. He said that his mother always said that in the previous days, when the daughter-in-law got up in the morning and swept the floor and wiped the table, the first thing was to make tea, especially to make strong boiling tea for the elderly. When the elders get up and wash up, the first thing is to drink tea, the water should be piping hot, and the tea should be classy. Huizhou people must also drink tea after eating three meals, and the lower generation must serve tea to the upper generation, and must use their hands to show respect. The elderly have special teacups or teapots that other family members cannot use.
When guests come, to do things according to Zhu Xi's "Family Etiquette", they must pay tribute to tea. Zheng Jianxin said that guests who come in winter must use a teacup to make tea, and in summer, they can use a pot. When toasting tea, use both hands, and the host sometimes says "please have a cup of tea" to show respect. Pouring tea for guests can not be filled, pouring full of pride and complacency. Guests also have to use their hands to receive tea, and they also have to sit up to show their courtesy. Before the exquisite family tea is toasted, it is necessary to put on the refreshments and then make tea to entertain the guests. Refreshments have special fruit boxes, different counties have different names and contents, most of which are local pastries, sugar and brine beans. Tea food is often eaten tea eggs, which means "a cup of clear tea is evergreen all year round, and two eggs are double happy at the door". The Zhejiang Museum has a manuscript of Huang Binhong's wife Song Ruobao, which mentions that in February 1952, a distinguished guest came to the house, "We entertain guests with tea eggs" and "According to the customs of the Anhui people, it is very good to treat guests with tea eggs."
More than 20 years ago, he had seen that the Huizhou tea ceremony was divided into Fumu tea, scribe tea and farmhouse tea. Huizhou merchants are Confucian merchants, attach importance to culture and education, and many rich merchants are also literati themselves, and pay attention to the quality of life. In the middle of the hall hangs calligraphy and paintings, and below the calligraphy and painting is a long table. The decoration on the table is not arbitrarily placed, and a large porcelain bottle should be placed in the east, and a wooden frame should be placed in the west, which means "East Peace and West Tranquility", praying for the owner to do business safely and smoothly. In front of the table is the Eight Immortals Table, and there are also tea table seats on both sides of the hall, and guests will sit here to drink "Rich Room Tea". Zheng Jianxin once collected the lid bowls flowing from the rich in the antique market, of course, these did not need the master's hands, and there were servants who soaked them for the master and guests to bring.
Zheng Jianxin, an expert in Huizhou tea culture
The remains of Huizhou tea culture are four-eyed pots
If this level of brewing tea becomes easier, it is scribe tea from the hall to the courtyard, bamboo forest, and stream. Compared with the previous two kinds, farmhouse tea is grounded. Zheng Jianxin said that the farmhouse tea is very simple and convenient. In the winter, a large pot is placed in the fire bucket to keep warm, and in the summer, a large pot is placed outside, and the guests will toast tea. Although farmers pick tea and make tea, they are reluctant to drink good tea leaves, and they drink coarse and old leaves, mainly to quench their thirst. When working in the wild, some people will bring a bamboo tube, that is, a piece of bamboo to punch a hole, filled with tea, or use a gourd to drink tea, the gourd is punched in the hole, and a bamboo basket is woven outside, which is convenient for carrying up the mountain.
<h1>The failure and prosperity of tea culture</h1>
In theory, Huizhou is not only a famous tea production area, but also has the accumulation of traditional Chinese culture, which is a good sample for us to understand the ins and outs of Chinese tea culture, but we can run to ancient villages and tea mountains to find that Huizhou tea culture is not like the standing Huipai mansions, ancestral halls and archway groups, leaving modern people with a well-known existence. Rich room tea and scribe tea are no longer drunk like that. We can only try our luck in the "ghost market" of Tunxi Old Street, where there are collected folk relics. Huizhou tea culture was once developed, which is manifested in the variety of tea sets, not only purple sand pots and porcelain pots, but also warm tea pots for warm tea in winter and herbal tea in summer. Warm tea niches, copper pots, etc. have devices for placing charcoal fires, with tea on top and heating and heating below. The lifting beam pot, tea tube, and tea gourd of herbal tea should have a large capacity to facilitate the cooling of drinking tea in summer.
We later found only the "four-eyed pot" that was once commonly used in Huizhou. It is made of tin and has a similar shape to a common kettle, with a special feature that there are four empty tubes running straight up and down at the bottom, followed by the shoulders and bottom of the pot on both sides, and the shoulder interface is decorated with a copper coin pattern. Zheng Jianxin said that because of these four empty pipes, the pot is placed in the fire bucket in winter, and the hot gas is uploaded through the four pipes, and the tea can be kept warm. In the summer, you should drink herbal tea, and the hot air can be emitted through the four pipes, and the tea is cooled quickly. This kind of hot and cold teapot was once very common in the Huizhou area, but now even in the ghost market is a hot commodity, not often encountered.
Huizhou tea culture continues in the most daily "rituals". Wang Shouchang, a villager in Bishan Village in Yixian County, works in the Bishan Bookstore, and in his spare time draws and remembers the former appearance of the village, and is a cultural person among the elderly in the village. He said that the once large families in the village originally still had all kinds of lid bowls, but after the "four old" and "Cultural Revolution", there was no more, and even tea was not drunk by everyone. But every household has tea leaves, and even if the guests are just visiting each other, pouring a cup of tea is a necessary etiquette. Even when they were too poor, the villagers tried to keep this etiquette. They use the "old tea head" method, every morning in the cup a little tea leaves, pour a little water to soak, which forms a similar "marinade" of tea brine, wait for guests to come and then mix in the water, save tea leaves.
The decline of Huizhou tea culture is directly related to the suffering of the country since the Republic of China. In the international market, it directly faced the competition of India, Ceylon and other countries, and the domestic war was the Northern Expedition War, the First Domestic Revolutionary War, the War of Resistance Against Japan and the War of Liberation. Zheng Jianxin said that the living order in Huizhou has been disrupted, drinking tea itself requires calm and leisure, without this social environment, tea has no platform to show, tea culture has disappeared, and even the types of tea are decreasing. "The War of Resistance against Emblem Merchants was very strong. Once upon a time, there was an ann tea exported to Southeast Asia, which was very popular. It had to be shipped out of Guangzhou, and the war broke out, and the tea was extinct since 1937. It wasn't until 1992 that it was made again. Zheng Jianxin said.
Xie Zheng'an, the founder of Huangshan Maofeng, died in the second year of Xuanun (1910), passing on the operation of Xie Yuda Tea Shop to his eldest son Xie Dajun, Xie Dajun failed to swim against the overall decline of Huizhou tea business, and by his later years, Xie Yuda Tea Shop's capital was all lost. Although its unit price is high, the yield is too small, the crops are not long in the mountains, and it is difficult to feed and feed. Fang Jifan said that when he was the poorest, his parents ate separately and looked for a way to live. One of his older sisters starved to death, and when the youngest brother was born, her mother had no milk and starved to death.
The revival of tea only sprouted after the reform and opening up. Zheng Zhongming secretly sold his family's tea to people who came to the factory to buy wood. "I didn't even have a phone, I had to send a telegram to contact." There are also few tea leaves sold, and it is great to be able to sell your own tea. I've amassed some clients in this way. Zheng Zhongming said. In 2000, realizing that the tea tree area in the core production area was the productivity of Taiping Monkey Kui, he spent 250,000 yuan of land circulation to buy 460 acres of land. "The villagers did not say less about the wind and cool words, Zheng Zhongming had money to burn the buns, the ancestors did not do enough as landlords, and still wanted to be landlords. No tea grower has made a fortune. Zheng Zhongming said.
Fang Jifan took the monkey pit, the core production area of Taiping Monkey Kui, as a registered trademark, and led the villagers in the village to establish rules and clean up the fake fresh leaves and fake dried tea out of the village. "I asked those who had been in prison from the street to take care of it, and as long as he caught the person who sold fake tea, he could fine 20,000 yuan, and the fake tea was sold to me." Fake tea outside didn't dare to come in. Then I bought two-thirds of the tea in the village, and I had the right to set the price. The price of taiping monkey kui was sold. When I finish receiving it, the villagers still have some left, and they will sell it a little higher or lower according to this standard, but it will not be much lower. Fang Jifan said.
Fang Jifan, national non-hereditary inheritor of Taiping Monkey Kui and director of Monkey Pit Village
The spring of Taiping Monkey Kui will not come until after 2003, and with the increase of the affluent population, Fang Jifan's sales can quadruple or triple every year. In the spring tea season, the monkey pit village became a scene, and Fang Jifan said that someone put piles of cash on the edge of the pot and waited for tea. One prepared four money detectors, afraid of breaking and not replacing. Each farmer has several wealthy customers from the city, who come every year and buy tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of pieces of tea each time. Monkey Pit Village has gone from being too poor to eat to now earning 300,000 yuan per capita. Farmers in the mountains have long bought houses outside, and they only return to their hometowns to sell tea for more than 20 days between April and May 1. In 2013, there was a mudslide on the mountain, the house in Monkey Pit Village was damaged, and there was not a single casualty, because there was no one on the mountain, and even after a few days of mudslide, some villagers came back to the meeting to find out. Fang Jifan was also elected village chief in 2005 for making money for the villagers.
The rapid growth of Maofeng in Huangshan was also after 2000. Xie Mingzhi, the general manager of Xie Yuda, said that his branch is the descendant of Xie Zheng'an's fourth son. His father, Xie Yiping, founded the Caoxi Tea Factory in 1993, but it was only a small factory in the mountains. The real development was after the restoration of the Xie Yuda brand in 2006. They now control 90 percent of the fresh leaf sources in the core production area of Huangshan Maofeng. Xie Yuda is also one of the few listed companies among tea companies.
<h1>A new tea man from the city</h1>
The small climax of Huizhou tea came in 2007, when former President Hu Jintao presented Putin with a tea gift box with four teas from Anhui. The tea shops in Tunxi Old Street all have group photos of the leaders of the two countries, but only the tea factories that have been purchased can come up with a thank-you letter from the national ceremony preparatory agency. Fang Jifan, Zheng Zhongming and Xie Yiping are all state gift providers. Fang Jifan said that last year's "double 11", his gift box of more than 10,000 yuan sold more than a dozen sets on Tmall. Rare high-grade tea as a weighty and elegant gift is a traditional culture in China, even farmhouse tea. "Wealthy customers don't wade through the mountains to buy a pound of tea to drink at home," the villagers said, "they are all sending friends and customers." ”
But tea can't exist only as a gift. As one of the most Chinese elements, many people are looking for ways to revitalize it, both culturally and commercially. Xie Yiping's successor, Xie Mingzhi, is 29 years old this year, with the growth background and value orientation of all the "post-85s" and "post-90s" in the city, and the distance from tea is not different because he is the sixth generation of Xie Zheng'an. In the industry where tea people wear Chinese costumes to demonstrate superb tea-making technology, Xie Mingzhi said very truthfully: "The pot of green killing has 200 degrees, and there is a psychological obstacle to reaching in, and the movement of the hand can only be on the fresh leaves." The first time I put my hand in, my little finger immediately burned. Xie Mingzhi grew up drinking Coke, but he felt that when he was close to 30 years old, he seemed to no longer like sweetness from the body, but could appreciate the aroma and taste of green tea.
Xie Mingzhi said that half of Xie Yuda's market is now in Anhui Province, and the user portrait is a man over the age of 35. What he wants to do after he takes over is to get a young middle class like him with a college education to drink tea.
There are also enthusiasts who are interested in tea who take the initiative to find Anhui. Wang Hao is also a "post-80s" and likes tea. After graduation, I first ran to Malian Road to find a job, and wanted to learn about tea while working. "After talking deeply, I found that there are not many people who understand tea in MalianDao, so it is better to study it myself and run the tea mountain according to the list of famous teas." Wang Hao said. He was interested in traditional production areas, the teachers who made tea, and what it was like to make tea according to traditional practices. This set down is not so easy, Anhui tea area he has been coming for several years, the first time he came, find the core production area of Huangshan Maofeng, find a teacher with 20 years of experience in making tea, buy the most expensive fresh leaves, a pot down, the master will be fried tea paste. "The master does have 20 years of experience in making tea, but he also hasn't made tea by hand for 20 years. Huangshan Maofeng is no longer a case of making tea by hand, and even farmers are mechanically processed. Wang Hao said.
The remote village of Monkey Pit is only popular during the annual tea picking season
The landscape in the core production area is still the same, but the tea is not necessarily the cup. Huangshan Maofeng fully adopted mechanization, and Taiping Monkey Kui added a rolling process. What impact these modern changes have on tea is a matter of opinion. Literature records that the Taiping Monkey Kui leaf veins made of authentic persimmon large leaf seeds are hidden red in the green veins, commonly known as "red silk thread", but Zheng Zhongming said that it is difficult to see the "red silk thread" now, because it is willing to give the soil good fertilizer, which is good for the formation of tea contained substances. Intuitively speaking, when the tea leaves are thick, the "red silk thread" cannot be seen. Fang Jifan is cautious about the current plastic process, and the roller rolling may contain losses in the tea, but this is a last resort. In the past, it was baked directly on the drawer while patting with your hands, that is because the tea master used to have calluses on his hands, not sweating, and not afraid of hot. Now the hands are tender, and they can't do such a thing. To make time, he also wanted to do the traditional craft.
Wang Hao's tea hunting journey actually collides between tradition and modernity, and he partners with Jia Yingsong, a graduate of the Tea Department of Anhui Agricultural University, to study standard tea-making techniques and stumble through tea mountains. Over the past few years, I have also met some tea masters who have mastered traditional crafts and are interested in traditional handicrafts. Wang Hao had to sell tea to feed his interest in exploring tea, but he jumped out of the traditional tea selling model. He graduated from the Central Academy of Fine Arts and is very familiar with the artists' folk art and rural construction. His studio also collaborated with Zuo Jing, an advocate and curator of the new folk art, on the "Yixian Hundred Workers" project. Every year during the Anhui tea season, he and Jia Yingsong recruit people who are interested in tea in the city to take tea classes in Bishan Village, learn about different tea mountains and tea varieties in Anhui, and experience the production methods of representative tea.
Wang Hao's visit to tea jumped out of the tea circle, and the person who followed him to the Bishan Village for class was not a tea person, but a white-collar worker from all over the world, while taking a class, he also took time to answer customer calls. Both the lecturer and the person who attends the class have a naïve nature, like a club or interest group in a university. This is also the effect he wants, running the tea mountain is not to be a tea farmer, but to understand traditional China and standard Chinese tea from the perspective of urban people.
Zhou Zuoren said that "drinking tea to green tea as authentic", but now the people in the city are consumerist, using middle-aged people's popular insulated glass cups to brew expensive Taiping Monkey Kui, very practical, but for attracting people who do not drink tea into the door, not happy. Wang Hao understood the heart of the young people in the city, exerted his own qualities in attending the Central Academy of Fine Arts, and examined the flow of the bowl. He said that while looking for traditional green tea, he also wants to restore the traditional way of drinking green tea, which is to use a lid bowl. Wang Hao collected a lot of old photos and videos of the Qing Dynasty and the Republic of China, studied the type of lid bowl, also checked folk customs materials, restored the different ways of covering bowls in different eras, and bought old lid bowls for practical research. He designed a lid bowl, the shape of which is traditional, but the cup holder has been adjusted to make it more stable.
Tea does not have so much sense of ritual in China, but it is a cultural foundation that flows in the blood, and once there is a chance of stability, there are still young generations to continue it. Compared with the antiquity of green tea, it was a new generation of new people who brought it into the market operation in the 1980s and 1990s, and now it is another generation of new people who want to bring it into modern urban life. (Intern journalist Huaxia also contributed to this article)