Chengxing Tea Estate plaque
Now Tianjin people drink tea, generally buy Zhengxingde tea leaves. Founded in the third year of the Qianlong Dynasty (1738), Zhengxingde is the representative of the Jinmen Tea House, and now it is almost the only time-honored tea house in Tianjin. In fact, there are many long-established tea houses in Tianjin, such as Chengxing, Quanxianghong, Tongyuanyi, Yuanfenghe, Yusheng, Tianchenghou, Qiyuan, Dongfa, Dalong, Huamao, Wanxingheng, all of which have been known in the three norths, and it can be seen that tea has always been a big market. Today we specifically talk about Chengxing Tea House.
Back in time to 1936, several employees of the old zhengxingde store left the store, pooled more than 30,000 silver dollars of capital, did their own tea business, rented a cottage in the Guangming Inn, opened a "tea inner bureau", and operated a tea wholesale business. After working for more than a year, the business developed, and a store department with a façade was opened in Zhugan Lane, Beidaguan, named "Chengxing Tea House", which means "Chengda cause is only credit, and the foundation of Prosperity is in the spirit".
Chengxing Tea House behind the National Hotel
At that time, most northerners used to drink flower tea, liked the fragrance of jasmine flowers or magnolia flowers, and were not very interested in Yunnan Puer, Hangzhou Longjing, Fujian Tieguanyin, and felt that vegetarian tea had no fragrance, nor was the color strong, so they did not drink the head. Generally speaking, Beijing and Tianjin sell the most jasmine-smoked flower tea "small leaves", Shandong sells "generous" or "vegetarian big leaves", and the northeast and northwest like black tea. Insiders call the tea leaves "triangle", customers call "Gao Moer", that is, the broken tea leaves left over when smoking "generous" and "small leaves", the price is cheap, quite popular with the people.
Chengxing Tea House's outer cabinet procurement, personal tour of the major famous mountains, directly from Fuzhou, Huizhou, Hangzhou and other places to collect incense, transported back to Tianjin, the business is getting bigger and bigger. They asked former President Xu Shichang to write a plaque and designed the "Starlight Shines on the Great Wall" pattern trademark, meaning "Chengxing", and the business has achieved theater gardens, tea gardens, grocery stores, baths, hostels, and also advertised on radio stations, monthly signs, movie theaters, railway stations, and commercial bustling areas.
wrapper
In the old tea shop, you used to sell tea leaves in small paper packages, you buy one or two tea leaves, and the shop guy can divide you into ten small bags. Chengxing Tea House launched a small package of tea bags, each bag is marked with price, weight, tea trademark according to different prices and grades, respectively, "Cheng" brand, "Great Wall" brand, "star" card, "city star" card, etc., there are two layers of wrapping paper, not scattered flavor, easy to preserve, easy to carry, so the sales are wide open.
Bagged tea this way affects other tea shops, but also follow the trend, small paper bags tea leaves are gradually eliminated. Tan Fuying, Zhang Junqiu, Ma Lianliang and other famous actors went to Tianjin to perform and sell tickets, and Chengxing Tea House cooperated with the opera garden, and a small bag of tea in a bag was given with the ticket.
Later, Chengxing Tea House rented the store department in Tianzengli (north of the present-day Bohai Building) in the Tianjin French Concession and opened a branch. By the end of the 1940s, the sales volume of this tea farm had grown from more than 100 quintals per year to more than 4,000 to 5,000 quintals, monopolizing certain tea-producing areas in Anhui, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Fujian and other provinces, and controlling many sales markets in Hebei, Shandong, Shaanxi, Gansu, Xinjiang, Inner Mongolia, Northeast China and other places. The number of tea estate personnel increased to more than one hundred, and the profit increased by dozens of times compared with the original capital, becoming one of the largest tea merchants in the country. The owner of the tea house also took a part of the profit and invested in several stores such as silver trumpets, chemical factories, wood factories, rice noodle shops, sack shops, and grocery stores to buy shares.
Chengxing Tea House
After the public-private partnership in the 1950s, Tianjin Tea Industry Company was established to collect black tea, green tea, flower tea, pressed tea, oolong tea and famous varieties from various provinces. Big bosses such as Chengxing and Zhengxingde are not willing to cooperate and secretly resist, but they cannot stop the torrent of the times.
At that time, Tianjin Tea Industry Company jointly operated and reorganized a number of tea shops, such as: Binjiang Road Guangyu Tea House, Heping Road Zhengxingde Tea House, Yongchun Tea House, Chengxing Tea House, Xi'an Road Changqing Tea House, Xiaobailou Xinhua Tea House, Guiyang Road Forward Tea House, Rongji Street Bichun Tea House, Yong'an Street Tea Shop on Yong'an Street, Yong'an Street Yong'an Tea House, etc. This pattern continued until the end of the last century. Chengxing Tea House has always been located on Heping Road, the operation has been very good, according to the needs of the market to sell all grades of Longjing, Biluochun, Dog Brain, Mao Feng and other famous tea hundreds of kinds. (Text: He Yuxin)