One person and one life are stationed, and one bowl of tea is served for a lifetime
I don't know when it began, whenever we mention the "craftsman spirit", it seems that the neighbor who imitates our traditional culture is always the neighbor who imitates our traditional culture, and always forgets that the five thousand years of Chinese culture have accumulated to this day, and there is a far more exquisite and moving inheritance than that. Those wandering craftsmen, their obscure lives, just like the depiction of Mr. Mu Xin's "Once Upon a Time Slow", the cars, horses, and days are slow, slow enough to do a good job, it takes a lifetime. They tell the story of their lives with cocoons and sweat, and they are also trying to use their lives to avoid the process of "from being to nothing" in their hands, and Yang Jichang is one of them.
Photos of Yang Jichang's later life
Origin: A difficult childhood, but a tea edge
As the only heir to the national intangible cultural heritage West Lake Longjing green tea stir-frying process, Yang Jichang, who has the reputation of "roasting tea king", and the connection with tea, but also from 1955, when he was only fourteen or fifteen years old, the quality was like a thin willow, the physique was thin, how to look like a good hand in the mountains and forests, it is impossible to do heavy labor, but in that era of extreme poverty, fourteen or five-year-old boys always have to ask for a livelihood for themselves.
So he began to make a living by burning wood for the tea master. This is a rather delicate manual work, because every step of the tea has strict requirements for the temperature of the pot, for example, in the "greening", the temperature of the pot must reach about 300 degrees Celsius, while in the "glow pot", it is about 170 degrees Celsius. Yang Jichang always carefully controlled the amount of firewood at that time, while watching the master's hand fly up and down in the stir-frying pot so unobstructed, and then the elegant tea aroma escaped from the pot.
In the past, the people's commune collectively roasted tea
Since then, Yang Jichang has been very envious of the master's magical calloused hands, longing for the day when he can also cook tea by hand, after burning firewood for four years, he finally got what he wanted and officially learned to stir-fry tea. However, on the first day of stir-frying tea, he left a number of blisters on his hands: holding chai and watching the master fry tea for four years, he thought that he could probably imitate one or two, but when he really got started, he knew that when he put his hand into the wok, he needed to have so many techniques and techniques of "shaking, pinching, grasping, buckling, pressing, grinding, and throwing".
That is, from this day on, the water on the palm of his hand became something that accompanied him for a long time like tea, and became the main object of his struggle when he fried tea: roasting tea could not stop, could not wait, and the water bubbles on his hands were like fire and pain, and they could only endure. Sometimes, to solve this problem, they would bake it in a sewing needle, flat through the blisters, and then wear a fine cotton thread inside, leaving one end outside. The cotton thread remains inside and twitches back and forth to prevent refilling of pus. Every time he talked about this method, Yang Jichang's brows would unconsciously wrinkle together, which showed how unforgettable the pain was.
However, by the time Yang Jichang fell ill at the beginning of 12 years, he had been roasting tea in this way for 54 years.
Yuanman: Doucha achieves fame, but it is also washed with lead
The Wind of Tea Fighting, which originated in the Tang Dynasty and flourished in the Song Dynasty, is a competition activity in which tea farmers evaluate new tea after the new tea is made. The difference between victory and defeat is one in the soup color, two in the mellow, three in the heat, to the collective evaluation, all of which are won by the superior. The style of tea fighting continues to this day, and has become an important window to show the local tea culture of Hangzhou, during which there is no shortage of legendary talks about the tea king's stir-fried Longjing having to shoot at a sky-high price. Yang Jichang's reputation as the "King of Stir-fried Tea" was gained by winning the championship in two consecutive tea fighting conferences in 1988 and 1989.
Certificate
Yang Jichang is very grateful to people for his recognition of his stir-frying skills, but he has never cared much about this name, from the age of 18 to the age of 47 to become a tea king, in the past thirty years of roasting tea, repeated "killing the green", "returning tide", "Hui pot" and so on, these steps, his soul seems to be pinned on the exquisite tea leaves in the pot, steaming with those tea leaves, in countless such days and nights, the pursuit of fame and fortune, the desire for money, it seems to be steamed away. All he would cling to was the pot of tea in front of him.
Yang Jichang participated in the tea roasting competition
Therefore, just as excellent stir-fried tea people never use the names of "lion", "dragon", "tiger" and "cloud" to distinguish tea leaves from other levels, tea is tea, he never thinks of himself as the "king of stir-fried tea", and still only thinks that he is an old farmer who stir-frys tea. However, since we are fortunate enough to have the honor and certification of the heirs of intangible cultural heritage, we must also make some contributions to this.
Fate: The years do not spare the family, and the tea tree has new shoots for life
Yang Jichang planted several acres of tea trees in a tea field near manjuelong's home in the West Lake scenic spot. He has always taken good care of every tea plant over the years. Although the year is getting late, he has a vague premonition that his tea roasting career is coming to an end, but Yang Jichang, who has passed the ancient rarity, still cherishes these tea trees very much, and almost every day he has to go up the mountain to see if they have sprouted buds - in his view, the newborn tea trees are like the new generation of tea roasters, pinning his full hopes.
Yang Jichang's family tea field
Yes, before he was finally unable to stir tea because of his advanced age and physical strength, Yang Jichang had already chosen an heir for himself - his youngest daughter Yang Yuehong and his younger son-in-law Zhang Guifa. Therefore, he did not have any hidden worries about the inheritance of the skill of stir-frying, but looked forward to seeing the day when his skills would be carried forward in the hands of his young daughter and son-in-law.
Of course, making this choice is not an easy task, for so many years, it is not that no one has come to worship the teacher, on the contrary, there are many young people with such thoughts, and there are even many foreigners. But they can't withstand the pain of roasting tea, Yang Jichang once said when he was still sober, doing this line of work at least three years of study, but the fact is that the people who came to worship the teacher, in fact, can persist for a year are rare, most of them feel the temperature of the stir-frying tea pot for the first time, and then they leave in sorrow.
Therefore, the disciples who finally obtained the true transmission of Yang Jichang's lifelong skills were finally passed on to them only by the younger daughter Yang Yuehong and the younger son-in-law Zhang Guifa, not because it implied that they were distant and close, but because the young couple did suffer hardships, and indeed followed him in the soil of the tea garden to investigate the habits of one tea tree after another, to identify the advantages and disadvantages of a variety of stir-frying methods, and to understand why he spent his whole life just to make a bowl of sweet and cold tea. Yang Jichang also feels that compared with his more "old stubborn" self, his daughter and son-in-law may find a better way to let traditional crafts continue in the tide of mechanized production.
Man is for "tea" among grass and trees, and insight is for "Tao". Yang Yuehong and Zhang Guifa are well aware that they carry the "tea" and "Tao" that their father has adhered to all his life, so when they accepted their father's inheritance, they invariably secretly made a vow to be tea for a lifetime.
Disciple Zhang Guifa (Yang Jichang's younger son-in-law)
Disciple Yang Yuehong (youngest daughter of Yang Jichang)
Inheritance
I wish Teacher Yang good health, and I also hope that the handmade stir-frying skills of West Lake Longjing can be passed down and carried forward!