According to the "Genealogy of the Ye Clan of Xianyuan" by Si Xiu in 1891 (the seventeenth year of Qing Guangxu), Tim Qinggong, a descendant of the Menggong of the Ye clan, moved from Shedong Lantian to Zhongtan in Xinming Township in the early years of the Yuan Dynasty, and then moved from Zhongtan to Xiangtan, Litan, Sanmentan and other places. In vain, slash-and-burn cultivation, planting corn, sesame, soybeans and other crops; planting tea trees, developing production. For a time, Ding Ding flourished, and was very famous before the Chongzhen period of the Ming Dynasty, and was known in history as the "Ten Mile Ye Family" in Xiaoheli.
The small river has thousands of peaks, overlapping mountains, lush vegetation, and the mountain streams in the territory are crisscrossed like spider webs, merging into the Machuan River, winding for tens of kilometers, leading directly to the Qingyi River to the mouth of the Yangtze River (Wuhu). It is located in the subtropics, belonging to the monsoon semi-humid climate, the mountain fog is lingering all year round, and the mountain is mostly immersed in rain and fog, forming a unique microclimate. The average annual temperature is 15.5 °C, the average annual rainfall days are 164 days, the fog days are 55.5 days, and the average annual sunshine hours are 1647.6 hours. Such a climatic environment coupled with the local metamorphic shale weathered sand loam, the tea area is in the 30 ° north latitude gold line, the quality of the tea grown is superior.
Ye's ancestors lived in such an environment. After the Tongzhi dynasty of the Qing Dynasty, due to the quelling of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom Movement, Jiangnan society was relatively stable, and with the rise of the foreign affairs movement and the development of import and export trade, the tea trade market developed rapidly. Ye's ancestors transported their own cash crops, such as indigo oil, yam, kudzu, lilies and other wild crops collected in the mountains, as well as processed tea, bamboo charcoal, etc. to Wuhu, Datong, Nanjing, Yangzhou, Hankou and other ports in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River through waterways to sell, in exchange for silver, and incidentally brought back silk, cloth, porcelain, grain and other commodities from other places for personal use, sale or gift to relatives and friends.
During the early 18th century to the beginning of the 19th century, the large family formed by Ye Dunwu (Ren'an) and his ancestors of the Xiangtan Ye clan can be said to be a period of vigorous development of the center of production, economy, culture and education in the small rivers of Taiping County, with private schools, teachers who specialize in private schools, and perennial helpers (including people who watch mountains, plant mountains, make tea and collect tea).
Ye Ren'an (1820-1895, Taiping County Chronicle of the Republic of China, vol. IX) is a remarkable figure, he saw that after the war in Nanjing was in ruins, tea had great business opportunities to be revived, he used the tea in his hometown, in the second half of the third year of Tongzhi (1864) in Nanjing to open the "Changchun Tea Shop" (Nanjing Lilang Street), Changchun means that trading like the Yangtze River flows continuously, the business is like spring shines forever. The business became better and better, and later successively added "Hechun Tea Shop" (Nanjing Shengzhou Road) and "Tongchun Tea Shop" (Nanjing Jiankang Road), known as "Sanchun Tea Shop" in Nanjing, which was unique in Nanjing for its exclusive taiping Maojian tea.
The Taiping Mao Tip sold in his shop became a gift tea for many dignitaries. Because most of the tea purchased in the hometown at that time was a unified commodity, the buds were uneven, and only about 90% dried, the aroma was not transparent; after the tea basket was packaged, it was transported by waterway, transported by raft and ship, and after being transferred to the store, it was necessary to re-bake the fire, sort out the stems, remove foreign bodies such as old leaves, old stems, tea seeds, etc., in order to make the Taiping Maojian tea for sale uniform in appearance and fragrant aroma. To this end, the "Sanchun Tea Shop" employs 60 or 70 workers, which is inexhaustible all year round and costs a lot.
In order to reduce expenses, the owner Ye Ren'an came up with a way to personally take people back to Xiaoheli to supervise the production and purchase of tea every year when new tea was on the market. He held training classes at the Yip Ancestral Hall to teach the Ye clan how to elaborately make Shangjian tea. Later, as long as his hometown bought all the sharp teas he asked to make, this increased the income of the clan and increased his own income. After more than ten years of exploration and painstaking management, his business in Nanjing Sanchun Tea Shop has become bigger and bigger, and his fame has become bigger and bigger.
In the ninth year of Tongzhi (1870), Ye Ren'an went around the official field to find a relationship for the eldest son Ye Xueyi to be admitted to the martial arts, and returned to his hometown to try to make a hair tip with an orchid shape as a gift, because the picking method was adopted when picking trees, and the buds made were very neat and beautiful, and the shape, color, fragrance and taste exceeded the tribute tip at that time. When this tea was delivered to the chief examiner, the chief examiner was overjoyed at first sight, because he loved to drink tea, but he had never seen such a good tea, and hurriedly asked Ye Ren'an what the name of this tea was, and Ye Ren'an replied without thinking that it was "Gongjian".
The chief examiner was not only proficient in martial arts, but also proficient in literature and ink, and after listening to Ye Ren'an's answer, he groaned deeply, and then slowly said, "Gongjian is what the Holy Spirit drinks, how can my generation consume it?" This tea name is not good also. After a pause, he said: "I will change it for you, it is called 'Kuijian', Linglang exam is imminent, Ji Xide, this tea name takes the word 'Kui', it is called 'Kuijian Tea'." Kui Sheng Wenchang, Ling Lang De WenChang Star Gao Zhao will definitely win. After hearing this, Ye Ren'an was very grateful and said in a loud voice, "It is really fortunate that the grass people have received the auspicious words of the lord and the name of the tea." Afterwards, Ye Xueyi did indeed pass the examination for martial arts. In the year of Guangxu Bingzi (1876), Ye Xueyi was also admitted to the Wuke Jinshi. Later, the people of Nanjing also gave the "Kuijian" tea zhi a place name, called "Taiping Kuijian" (according to the memories of the elderly ye family).
With the rise of the foreign affairs movement, the city of Nanjing has basically restored its former prosperity with the Yangtze River waterway in the east and west and the canal water transport in the north and south, and merchants have gathered. Famous tea from all directions gathered to become the largest tea market in the country at that time, although Sanchun Tea Shop was unique, it also faced fierce competition in the market, and the original tea picking method could not meet the requirements of dignitaries and wealthy merchants. According to the old man, at that time, there was a high-class old customer who chose the tea leaves of sanchun tea house in order to give gifts, and required that the gift tea leaves must be good in color, aroma, taste and shape, and the price can be negotiated.
At that time, Ye Ren'an selected a few pairs from the existing Mao tea according to the customer's requirements for him to try, and although the customer was more satisfied, it did not meet the ideal requirements. Because Taiping Maojian tea is even a high-end product such as Gongjian and Tianjian, it is impossible to pick out beautiful and straight tea buds from it due to kneading. So he pondered bitterly, and later came up with a way to change the way to pick tea in the tea, determined to learn from the West Lake Longjing, Huizhou Dafang and other famous tea picking methods, from the tea picking to find tips.
Combining the insight of the business field, Ye Ren'an Sanchun Tea Shop has successfully made three innovative breakthroughs based on the traditional technique of Taiping Maojian Tea (taiping Maojian Tea's shaping is fried green bud tea shaping, which began in the late Ming Dynasty to the early Qing Dynasty). The first innovative breakthrough was the flattening of bud leaves. At that time, the most famous West Lake Longjing in the country, the tea was flat and straight, smooth and uniform. According to the characteristics of orchid fragrance in the large-leaf tea produced in the local mountainous areas, Ye Ren'an and the Ye clan people have the characteristics of orchid fragrance, and draw on the Longjing tea preparation method to design and create a flat orchid shape with one bud and two leaves.
The second innovative breakthrough is the tea making process. West Lake Longjing is pure fried green, its shape is completed in the frying pan, and the local production of large-leaf tea due to the thick buds, in the pot shape can not meet the requirements of orchid shape, and it is not easy to be neat and uniform and straight unchanged. Because at that time, the tea baking with bamboo wire weaving had been invented, and the roasted tea leaves were mostly carried out with baking seeds, so they changed to the top of the baking to press, pinch, rational method of shaping and using the method of changing the roasting tea, this reform not only made the ideal flat orchid shape, but also created a new type of tea, which is now called roasting. According to expert reviews, the quality of baked green is also excellent, so that later more effective imitators.
The third innovative breakthrough was the picking and budding of tea leaves. The traditional Taiping Maojian tea does not pay much attention to picking and selecting buds, and Ye Ren'an and the Ye clan have summed up the "three choices" for the innovative and excellent sharp bud tea, that is, choosing the mountain head, choosing the tea tree, and selecting the tea buds. Choosing a mountain is actually choosing a tea garden, because the tea gardens owned by the same village have different tea aromas, and if you do not choose, you cannot produce a special aroma of tea. Choosing tea trees, the same tea trees also have differences, no good tea trees can not grow particularly fat bud leaves, found that the large-leaf varieties produce the best quality tea.
Since then, the Mao tea in the small river has been widely promoted with the large-leaf tea variety as the tea species, forming the current Taiping Monkey Kui Persimmon Large Tea Variety. The selection of tea buds is to pick raw leaves and go down the mountain to be spread in time, while selecting a neat two-leaf bud tip, and try to keep the size neat. Grasping the above three innovative breakthroughs coupled with meticulous production, the new high-quality hair tip - Kui Tip was created. In this way, Ye Ren'an improved the original Kuijian production process step by step from the harvesting of tea leaves. Since then, the production process of Taiping Kuijian (the predecessor of Taiping Monkey Kui) has been kept secret in the Ye family for many years, but it has gradually spread in Xiangtan and Sanmen areas, and gradually matured, making it the best of Taiping Maojian tea and being introduced to the market.
Taiping Monkey Kui
After Taiping Kuijian was listed in Nanjing, it was favored because of its good color, fragrance, taste and shape. It is rumored that some high-class customers are very satisfied with the tea after seeing and brewing, and buy this tea at a high price as a gift. At that time, the residents of Jinling and other places were in vogue to drink Taiping Kuijian, and the supply exceeded demand, so each customer was limited to selling only two or two. In the process of creating the Taiping Kuijian at that time, Ye Ren'an (who was engaged in business in Nanjing) in Xiangtan and Ye Nanhua (1883-1957) (who was engaged in business in Wuhu and set up Ye Nanji Tea House in Xiangtan, known as the first person to see tea in Taiping County, known as "Orchid Brother") were the most famous. At that time, tea was divided into: Kui, Gong, Heaven, Earth, People, and six levels, and tea stem tea foam was graded foreign tea. "Kuijian" in the evaluation price is divided into The upper Kui, the middle Kui, the second Kui three, etc., can not be rated as the Kui tip and the production of the unified goods, according to the tenderness of the tea, the production process is divided into: Gong Jian, Tianjian, Ground Tip, Human Tip, and Tip Five Levels, according to the quality of the price, good tea good price, sub-tea low price. Later, in the eighth year of the Republic of China (1919), the Ye family's "Sanchun Tea Shop" had reached hundreds of thousands of silver dollars, of which the working capital reached more than 100,000 silver dollars, so that the Nanjing Tea Market had to invite the "Sanchun Tea Shop" to the market every year to open the scale market before it could ask for a price, which can be described as a monopoly party.
According to the data of the Anhui Tea Research Institute and other related materials, by the middle of the Qing Dynasty, with the prosperity of the tea market, taipingkui became famous, the supply and demand increased, and the tea garden owners in Longmen Mountain (across the majority of the current Xinming and Longmen two townships) competed to follow suit, tea merchants inquired about procurement, and tea making technology continued to spread outward. In the first year of the Republic of China (1912), Taiping Xiangtan tea merchant Yejia Changchun Tea Shop selected the large-leaf varieties (now known as persimmon tea) fresh leaves of Kuiwei two leaves and one bud (also known as two knives and one shot) in his own Monkey Pit Tea Garden (now Monkey Pit Ancient Road), carefully made several kilograms of Kui tip, participated in the Nanjing Nanyang Persuasion Venue and exhibited at the Ministry of Agriculture and Commerce and won the award. In the third year of the Republic of China (1914), liu Jingzhi, a three-door tea merchant (who had been elected as the chairman of the Nanjing Tea Trade Union at that time), agreed with the gentry to buy a few catties of tea at the Yejia Changchun store (The Kuijian specially made by Monkey Pit's own tea mountain), which was selected by the Taiping County Chamber of Commerce and exhibited at the Panama Pacific World Exposition held in San Francisco ( the exhibition was held in February 1915 ) , and won a gold medal in one fell swoop. When sending samples, the organizer requires that the sample tea be given a name in combination with the place of origin, monkey kui refers to the kui tip produced in monkey pit (now Monkey Pit Ancient Road), the tea is large, and the county name is "Taiping", named "Taiping Monkey Kui". According to the memories of many elderly people such as Ye Tiansheng, the fourth generation of the founder of the Taiping Monkey Kui Zhengzong, and Ye Liangyou, a member of the Ye clan, this award was stored in the Ye Clan Ancestral Hall in Xiangtan before the founding of New China, and the whereabouts were unknown on the eve of the founding of New China.
Monkey Pit Trail
Since the advent of the Taiping Monkey Kui, the Kui tip made by the Xiangtan Ye clan has been exquisitely produced and has been praised by the world. According to the local 89-year-old Ye Shengrong and many other elderly people recalled: When Ye Ren'an was doing business in those years, he saw that the people of Nanjing learned that Taiping's green tea (jian tea) valley rain tip, two leaves holding a bud, is a good tea with high quality and high taste, Nanjing people feel that drinking this tea, feel fashionable, eager to buy. So every spring tea picking season, Ye Ren'an returned to his hometown in the small river, instructed the guys and tea workers to directly pick out the good branches with pointed hair peaks in their own monkey pit tea mountain, and after going down the mountain, they poured one branch after another on the board and then carefully picked, and the tips and pieces were separated to make kui tip and unified goods. Later, during the tea season, when the tea house opened in Xiangtan Village bought tea, it also required local tea farmers to make this kind of Kuijian tea in this way. The picking and production process of this "Taiping Kuijian" tea was first created and developed by Xiangtan YeRen'an. Whether it is said to be "Taiping Kuijian" or "Taiping Monkey Kui", there is a historical basis for starting in Xiangtan, and it is worthy of the name to call Ye Ren'an the founder.
Taiping Monkey Kui won a gold medal in 1915 at the Panama Pacific World Exposition, and the following year in Jiangsu Province, he won gold medals and awards, and the "Taiping Monkey Kui" has been famous at home and abroad ever since. In Chinese cultural etiquette, "meeting friends with tea" is naturally reminiscent of the friendship of gentlemen. Taiping Monkey Kui has even appeared on the international stage as a "national ceremony", and has been selected as a "national ceremony" tea for many times to be given to foreign heads of state and foreign guests.
In July 1958, the state began to build the Chencun Reservoir (now known as Taiping Lake), delineating the water level submerged line below 121 meters of the surrounding natural villages to relocate, involving 8 production teams and 14 natural villages involved in Xiangtan. In the second half of 1959, two-thirds of the population of the Ye family in Xiaoheli emigrated to Sankou Commune in Taiping County (now Sankou Town, Huangshan District), and formed a new village of three immigrants under the name of Xiangtan, the Xiangtan Brigade (now Xiangtan Village), and the other one-third lived in the village.
Xiangtan Ye's Kuijian production skills are exquisite, and have been praised by the world for many times, and the tea making process is exquisite, and the color, aroma, taste and shape tea making process are first-class. Three Xiangtan people, Taiping Monkey Kui authentic founder of the fourth generation of Ye Tiansheng and Ye clan people together to inherit the ancestral skills, to adapt to the requirements of the market economy, repeated experiments in breeding, improve the traditional production process, so since 2015 by the Huangshan City Federation of Trade Unions, the Municipal Human Resources and Social Security Bureau and the Huangshan District People's Government sponsored by the "Huizhou Hundred Workers" City Taiping Monkey Kui Handicraft Competition has been held in Xiangtan Village, Sankou Town every year, has been held for seven consecutive sessions.
As the fifth generation of the founder of the Taiping Monkey Kui Zhengzong, Ye Shulin carried forward the fine tradition of Ye's ancestral training, inherited the ancestral inheritance, and carried forward the past and opened up the future. Carry forward the production technology of Taiping Monkey Kui, combine the needs of modern market economy, constantly explore and innovate, improve the planting technology and production process of Taiping Monkey Kui tea, and continuously improve the brand value of taiping Monkey Kui market. In May 2009, Ye Shulin applied for the establishment of Huangshan Huangshan Chenglin Tea Industry Co., Ltd., the main product is "Taiping Monkey Kui". Inheriting the "soul" and "pulse" of Ye's ancestor "Sanchun Tea Shop", and conforming to the new development of the times, the Sanchun Monkey Kui Tea Planting Professional Cooperative in Huangshan District, Huangshan City was established.
After more than ten years of leapfrog development, by the end of 2020, the company's total assets will be 30.17 million yuan (including total fixed assets of more than 20 million yuan) and sales income will be more than 30 million yuan. The company is one of the 55 governing units of the first council of Anhui Tea Industry Alliance and the standing director unit of Huangshan Tea Industry Association. In 2017, the company established the "Huangshan City Huangshan District Xinming Monkey Village Ancient Road Family Farm", is "Huangshan City Huangshan District Contract-abiding and Trustworthy Enterprise", in September successfully listed "Anhui Province New Fourth Board" (710590), is the first batch of huangshan district listed new four board tea enterprises. In September 2018, the company was awarded the title of "Municipal Family Farm" by Huangshan Agricultural Industrialization Leading Enterprise, and in the same year, it was awarded the title of "Municipal Family Farm". In May 2021, the company was approved to join the National Traditional Tea Alliance.
In the development process of more than ten years, YeShulin has always made continuous breakthroughs and developments from three aspects. Focus on branding. The company's existing Taiping Monkey Kui production base covers an area of 66.7 hectares. In order to make the tea industry bigger and stronger, in 2016, more than 20 hectares of land were transferred through land circulation and leasing in The monkey pit village of Xinmingxiang, the core production area of Taiping Monkey Kui. The registered "Monkey Source Peak" trademark was awarded the "Huangshan Famous Trademark" in November 2016 and the title of "Famous Trademark of Anhui Province" in December 2017, and its products are "National Geographical Indication Protection Products", which has a high reputation and credibility in the Taiping Monkey Kui tea industry, and the "Monkey Source Peak" brand and the Monkey Pit Ancient Road brand Taiping Monkey Kui have won the "Gold Medal of the 10th International Tea Industry Expo in Anhui Province".
Chenglin Tea industry at the 2020 Anhui International Tea Expo
Pay attention to quality construction. The company has passed IS09001-2008 quality management system certification and SC food production license certification. In 2020, it obtained the "Organic Product Certification Certificate", invested 8 million yuan in the xinmingxiang Monkey Pit Village Monkey Pit Ancient Road Side Mountain Field circulation suitable for Taiping Monkey Kui planting and growth of tea planting base, and built a new Taiping Monkey Kui cleaning, standardized primary processing and production plant of more than 700 square meters, product processing ecology. The company realizes ecological protection in the construction of tea gardens so that consumers can really drink tea and green organic tea, and the base planting and processing tea is produced in strict accordance with the requirements of green and ecological tea standards. In the management of tea gardens, artificial weeding is adopted for tea plants, only organic fertilizer and cake fertilizer and farm manure are applied, physical control is implemented for the control of diseases and insect pests in tea gardens, and sticky worm boards and solar trap lights are used to hunt and kill, no pesticides are sprayed, pesticide residues are eliminated, and the safety of raw materials is controlled from the source.
While doing a good job in the green prevention and control of tea garden management, the company implemented the whole process of quality and safety traceability of the quality and safety of tea products in 2019 in accordance with the requirements of the Ministry of Agriculture, that is, from tea garden management to tea leaf picking, processing and production. The products purchased by the customer can scan the QR code to inquire about the production management records, picking, processing and production dates, production and processing personnel and batch numbers of the purchased tea gardens. Focus on optimizing your marketing. Adhere to the "ecological tea, science and technology tea, standardized tea sales", adopt the "company + family farm + cooperative + farmer" industrial business model, take the road of order agriculture, the main brand "Monkey Source Peak" and "Monkey Pit Ancient Road" brand Taiping Monkey Kui Tea. Adopt a combination of online and offline, wholesale, specialty stores, supermarkets, trade fairs and other forms of sales. Through television, newspapers, advertisements, WeChat and other all-media, weChat and other media to increase external publicity and strengthen foreign cooperation.
At the end of 2019, the company opened online sales on e-commerce platforms such as Pinduoduo and Taobao, and is committed to inheriting and carrying forward the traditional handicraft skills of Taiping Monkey Kui. Pay attention to the deep integration of enterprises and culture, and reflect the Taiping Monkey Kui tea culture of the two major brands in every dealership and every product packaging, and won the Excellent Sales Award of Anhui International Tea Industry Expo in September 2020. While becoming bigger, stronger and better, the company continuously improves social benefits, pays attention to repaying society, and strives to increase the income of local tea farmers, solve the employment of local farmers, drive surrounding tea farmers to get rich together, and provide project financial support to poor villages. Since its establishment in 2009, the company has helped local tea farmers sell tea, from more than 3 tons per year to more than a dozen tons; the value of tea sales has developed from three or four million yuan per year to more than 20 million yuan now. In the past three years, actively participating in poverty alleviation and poverty alleviation, the company has taken measures such as "contract order" priority, preferential price for tea purchase, and integration of migrant workers and financial poverty alleviation to help poor households.
Various poverty alleviation (industrial poverty alleviation, employment poverty alleviation, etc.) has increased from tens of thousands of yuan per year to more than 200,000 yuan in 2020. At the same time of poverty alleviation and poverty alleviation, the company actively participates in the rural revitalization development strategy. In September 2019, as the executive committee of the Huangshan District Federation of Industry and Commerce and the vice president unit of the Sankou Town Federation of Industry and Commerce, the company adopted the form of a contract order to purchase tea farmers' tea at a higher purchase price than the market. In the management of tea gardens, tea processing and production, with ecological, green and food quality and safety standards to guide tea farmers in processing and production, it has been highly praised by villagers.
Author: Zhou Zhuoqun Huang Heping
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