Heshan black tea is famous in history. According to the "Chronicle of Heshan County", "the origin of the Heshan tea industry has a long history, as far back as the Song and Yuan Dynasties", which has a history of more than 700 years. According to legend, Heshan tea cultivation originated in Gulao Lishui and then spread to Hecheng, Gulao, Baishui Belt and other places. During the Light Years of the Qing Dynasty, Heshan County planted more than 80,000 acres of tea, with an annual output of 80,000 quintals of mao tea, and an annual export of nearly 30,000 quintals of tea, which were exported to Europe, America, Nanyang, Oceania and other places, and were important materials for foreign trade of the Qing Dynasty.
Visit
Visit the former starting point of Heshan tea
On March 26, Nandu reporters came to the Heshan Gulao Tea Mountain Gulao Ecological Park, bypassed the curved mountain road, and were greeted by a large area of tea trees neatly planted on the hillside. Tea Mountain is located in the northwest of Gulao Town, the mountain is about 200-400 meters above sea level, the air is humid, the fog is thick, the dew is rich, and the unique natural conditions are suitable for growing tea.
Lao Jinming of Chashan Hongxing Village in Gulao Town, Heshan Mountain, has been growing tea leaves in Chashan for decades. He told Nandu reporters that Chashan was the first place in Heshan to grow tea. Legend has it that in the Song Dynasty, a man and a woman came from Fujian to live in the Shiyantou Cave in Lishui Village, Gulao, and began to grow green tea. After their deaths, they were called Shigong Shibo by posterity, and the green tea they planted multiplied into the later Gulao tea. Later, the people of Lishui Village developed tea gardens in Kwai Gen Mountain behind their village, and built 10 villages successively, after which Kwai Gen Mountain was renamed Tea Mountain.
In the middle of the Ming Dynasty, tea was also introduced outside of Gulao, and it was relatively large-scale. During the Qing Dynasty (1662-1795), a large number of Hakka people moved from eastern and northern Guangdong into the central mountains of Heshan, which rapidly expanded the tea area.
Li Jingbo, the head of the Laisu Tea Farm in Heshan Gonghe Town, is a senior tea farmer in Heshan City who has been growing tea since his retirement. He introduced that the "Chronicle of Heshan County" in 1827 recorded that the entire Heshan Mountain at that time appeared in the whole of Heshan Mountain, "no mountain does not produce tea, tea market reached more than 60 places", in the tea mountain, Dayan Mountain and other places "all look at the tea trees" and "tea pickers endlessly".
Historical changes The silver needle of Gulao is difficult to find
The most famous and legendary tea species in The Guru Tea Mountain is called the "Gulao Silver Needle", but to find this tea plant, you need to enter the depths of the tea mountain, and you may not be able to find it.
During his visit to the tea mountain, the Nandu reporter asked the local tea farmers: "Where are the gulao silver needles?" The answer was basically the same, "There may still be in the mountains, but there is no cultivation in the tea plantations."
According to local tea farmers, Gulao silver needles are produced in Lishui Shiyantou, Gulao Town, so it is also known as Rock Head Tea, which has been highly respected in the late Qing Dynasty and has become one of the famous tea brands in China. However, during the Xianfeng and Tongzhi years of the Qing Dynasty (1851-1874), the Hongbing Uprising and the Tuke Armed Struggle in Heshan County lasted for more than 10 years, social unrest caused the displacement of tea farmers, and most of the tea gardens were burned or abandoned. After the First World War, Heshan overseas Chinese operated a tea farm (commonly known as "Golden Mountain Villa"), although Heshan tea was restored to an annual export of 55,000 quintals, but due to the inability of science and technology to keep up, poor quality, and weak market competition, the good times were not long.
Lao Jinming said that in the past, tea farmers would sell the tea green they picked to the tea factory, but for a long time the price of tea green was very low, and the tea farmers in many places in Heshan saw that they could not make money, so they cut down the tea trees and planted other crops. With the decline of heshan tea cultivation later, the "Gulao silver needle" gradually disappeared. Lao Jinming introduced, "Gulao silver needle" is made of the freshest buds of tea plants, the yield is extremely low, generally good tea people over the mountains to find, self-made self-drinking, the current tea mountain tea garden mostly planted Yunnan big leaves and other imported excellent tea varieties.
Resettled Vietnamese returnees to grow black tea
Nandu reporters came to Shili Tea Township in Shuanghe Town, Heshan City, which is now the most concentrated tea planting base in Heshan. It is understood that black tea, as one of the iconic specialties of the double, has the reputation of "Yinghong No. 9 in the north and double black tea in the south". The rise of Shuanghe black tea is inseparable from the history of Vietnamese returnees and overseas Chinese farms in Shuanghe Town.
In August 1978, in order to resettle Vietnamese returnees, the synthetic farm in the west of Heshan was renamed Synthetic Overseas Chinese Farm (later withdrawn to build a town and merged into Shuanghe Town). By the 1980s, Synthetic Overseas Chinese Farm had 6,000 acres of tea gardens. Driven by this, Shuanghe Town has become a place where tea cultivation in Heshan is more concentrated. According to local tea farmers, there are 18 tea picking teams at the peak, picking 20,000 to 30,000 catties of tea green every day.
Lin Yayang, the head of the Qiao Yikang Tea Planting Cooperative in Shuanghe Town, is a returned overseas Chinese from Vietnam. In 1979, Lin Yayang's father returned from Vietnam and engaged in tea cultivation and production in Shuanghe Town, after which Lin Yayang took over his father's business and initiated growers to grow tea through the cooperative. He processed the tea green he planted and bought back into tea for sale, and the finished product sold more than 20,000 catties.
In recent years, Shuanghe Town has supported the development of the local tea industry from the perspective of policies and funds, and standardized the development of tea factories through policy guidance. In 2015, Heshan black tea became a national agricultural product geographical indication product, and double black tea was the main sample. At present, the existing tea area of Shuanghe Town is more than 3,000 mu, and the tea varieties mainly include 7 kinds of Yunnan Daye, Meijian, Jin guanyin, daffodil, Jinxuan, etc., which is a pollution-free tea production base in Guangdong Province.
In 2018 and 2019, Heshan City held the first and second Heshan Black Tea Cultural Festival to promote the development of the "tea + cultural tourism" industry. In 2019, Heshan Modern Agricultural Industrial Park (Tea) was included in the Guangdong Modern Agricultural Industrial Park, the main production area was included in the first batch of Guangdong Province's characteristic agricultural product advantage zones, and "Heshan Black Tea" and "Heshan Orange (Chrysanthemum) Pu Tea" were identified as guangdong province's famous and excellent agricultural products.
Poverty alleviation
"Company + tea garden + poverty alleviation household" model precision assistance
Heshan Gulao Chashan Village is an old revolutionary area with a relatively weak economic foundation, and is the object of pairing and support of the Jiangmen Federation of Industry and Commerce". In 2019, the Heshan Federation of Industry and Commerce innovated the model, gave full play to the advantages of tea mountain resources, adopted the "company + tea garden + poverty alleviation household" model to carry out precise assistance, and mobilized social forces to jointly optimize the tea industry chain and share the dividends of economic development.
It is understood that the specific approach is to pay 20,000 yuan per mu of tea field per year, and provide a total of 60,000 yuan to Gulao Ecological Park Co., Ltd. in three years, and gulao ecological park will pay the same price (20,000 yuan) of tea to the investor every year, and pay a total of 5,600 yuan to the help object (1 household and 1 mu) every year as a support fund. During this period, the helpers can go to the tea garden to study, train and work, and pay an additional remuneration of 50 yuan per time.
Under the vigorous mobilization of the Heshan Federation of Industry and Commerce, 21 enterprises and party branches such as Yatushi, Jielang Hardware, Yatu High-tech, Donggu, and Guoji Nanlian invested 1.26 million yuan to claim 21 acres of tea fields, supporting a total of 21 precision poverty alleviation targets to devote themselves to the tea planting industry, helping poverty alleviation targets to gradually achieve economic income and improve their lives.
Lao Jinming, a poor household in Hongxing Village, Gulao Tea Mountain, said: "The tea garden issues 5600 yuan poverty alleviation subsidy every year, we come here to pick tea and have another labor remuneration, a year's poverty alleviation subsidy plus labor income are more than 10,000 yuan, thank you very much for the help of enthusiastic enterprises." ”
Written by: Nandu reporter Luo Zhongming correspondent Zhu Qiang Deng Jingjing