Zhou Chonglin, best-selling author, leading expert in yunnan tea culture research, author of more than 10 best-selling tea books such as "Tea War".
Q: In the just-concluded "Books in Kunming" selection campaign, your new book "The Basics of Tea" won the honor of "Yunnan Top Ten Good Books". There is a view in the tea industry that because of your persistent writing, the writing of Yunnan tea has become a phenomenon. Heard that your tea book has sold more than a million copies?
Zhou Chonglin: Being able to win an award is an affirmation of my professional writing. This is the third time that I have been listed in the "Top Ten Good Books of Yunnan", the first time is "Tea Fan of the Republic of China: The Day of Drinking Tea with the Master", the second time is "Creation: The Secret of the Ancient Tea Garden in Yunnan", and this time it is "The Basics of Tea: The Revelation of the Lu Yu Tea Classic". The organizers said that I was one of the most awarded authors, and I was surprised by the tea theme every time.
My tea writing is mainly divided into three types. The first is the reconstruction of local knowledge, such as "Mengku Seeking Tea", "Yiwu and the Ancient Six Tea Mountains"; the second is a common sense series, such as "Yunnan Black Tea Textbook" and "Pu'er Cooked Tea Textbook"; the third is spiritual history, "The Basics of Tea" and "Tea Fan of the Republic of China" all belong to this kind. Since 2004, when I edited "The World of Pu'er", I have published more than 20 kinds of tea books, which have sold more than one million copies, and I have personally been labeled as a tea scholar.
Tea culture has been very hot in recent years, and shengshixing tea is well. There are more and more tea drinking groups, and there are more and more people like me who specialize in tea culture, and in general, Yunnan does have a unique tea culture research group.
Q: Can you talk specifically about this tea culture research group unique to Yunnan? What's different?
Zhou Chonglin: The development of this round of Pu'er tea culture is completely spawned by the market. Yunnan Pu'er tea has produced a large number of writers, characterized by "barbaric growth". They are self-funded, self-created in their own writing style, and are highly original, to name a few. For example, Zhan Yingpei, her series of books on the investigation of tea mountains, has become a masterpiece of tea mountain writing. Yang Kai continued to conduct in-depth research on the history of tea in Yunnan in the Republic of China, digging out many little-known tea histories. Wang Yingxin has built an aesthetic system belonging to Yunnan tea, which is extremely wonderful. In addition to the print media, the research team based on the WeChat public account is also prominent, such as the tea industry revival team, the Hongyi team, etc.
In the past, tea culture research mainly included the tea research institutes under the Provincial Academy of Agricultural Sciences, various associations, university tea colleges and tea-related research institutes, as well as the tea industry company's own research team, which is highly related to the interests of the industry, and most of the research on tea is for rice bowls.
I embarked on the study of tea culture, which is completely interested, just in time for the dividend period of the industry, it is easier to raise research funds, and the books written are also bought. In order to better serve readers, I also opened a bookstore, at first only selling my works, and later selling other people's works, and slowly this bookstore expanded, moving from my home to Tea City, helping more than 300 tea book authors sell more than 40,000 books every year. Tea books are very niche, if there is no such a professional bookstore as ours, many tea books can not be circulated at all, and some books have a print volume of only one or two hundred copies.
Pu'er tea writing, in addition to professional scholars and writers, there are a large number of tea merchants, who have also made great contributions to the dissemination of Pu'er tea knowledge.
Q: Now the cloud tea industry, has a strong industrial foundation and development advantages, how to promote Yunnan tea culture next, to help build a hundred billion cloud tea industry, do you have any good suggestions?
Zhou Chonglin: First, I hope that tea companies will provide more tea culture researchers, otherwise there will be one more tea boss and one less tea expert in the market. The second is to hope that the government attaches great importance to the development of tea culture, the tea industry in Yunnan is essentially a cultural and creative industry, without cultural empowerment, how difficult it is to sell leaves alone.
The second is to suggest that the government organize high-level propaganda groups to go out and talk about Pu'er tea, pu'er tea has negative news every year, and the development environment still needs to be optimized. Relevant competent departments or associations should organize more people to go to the Greater Bay Area to learn how to sell Pu'er tea in restaurants, go to Guangzhou to learn the trading model of Pu'er tea, go to Fujian to learn how to make a brand, and go to Zhejiang to learn how to engage in tea education. It is even more necessary to encourage enterprises to enter the new tea track and go abroad. Many people do not know that there is a new tea drink called "Bawang Chaji" in Yunnan, which has opened more than a dozen stores overseas.
Zhejiang spends a lot of money every year to make tea culture, fujian is also the case, Yunnan is the case, may have spent a lot of effort on planting, but at the cultural level, far from enough.
It is said that tea has culture, but does the cultural department have the shadow of tea culture? I once suggested that a tea people association should be formed under the literary association, just like the writers association and the calligraphers association, but is it possible? Wenlian did not regard the tea ceremony as an art at all, but you see that in the Tang Dynasty, Lu Yu's tea ceremony and the calligraphy of his friend Yan Zhenqing were an art form that went hand in hand, and the tea ceremony is now a very advanced art in Japan. Now the cultural department treats tea only as a produce, excluding researchers like me from artists.
Yunnan should seize the great opportunity of the development of Pu'er tea and strive to build a world tea culture center. Relying on the huge ancient tea tree resources, the vibrant tea industry, and the emerging tea culture and creative institutions, Yunnan has great prospects.
Q: How to give play to the role of tea culture in rural revitalization? How to realize the yunnan tea culture to help and empower the cloud tea industry, what is the special significance for building a 100 billion cloud tea industry?
Zhou Chonglin: The so-called road of rural revitalization is the road of cultural development, the road of ecological protection, and the road of industrial development. Many areas in Yunnan can get rid of poverty and become rich thanks to tea. Tea can enrich the people, tea can flourish, and tea can play an important role in rural revitalization.
Yunnan tea culture empowers the tea industry, which I summarize into 12 words: Tea Horse Ancient Road, More Aged and Fragrant, and Century-old Trees.
The Tea Horse Trail has changed from an academic concept to a world cultural heritage and has risen to a national strategy, which is equivalent to opening a new cultural movement. With the Tea Horse Ancient Road, YunCha has a large cultural background that is on par with Jiangnan culture, Huipai culture, and Bashu culture. Tea without culture is a leaf, and a leaf with culture is tea. At present, the Jingmai Mountain Ancient Tea Garden on the Tea Horse Ancient Road is expected to soon become a World Heritage Site, and the area affected by the Tea Horse Ancient Road is also an important area for the construction of the national "Belt and Road".
The more aged and fragrant, it is a product reshaping caused by the concept of consumption, so that Pu'er tea has become a symbol of new products. In the past, drinking tea was the context of green tea, paying attention to drinking new tea. Pu'er tea pays attention to the drinking of old tea, which is traditional for the Greater Bay Area, but it is a revolutionary drink for the green tea area. Through the promotion and popularization of more and more aged and fragrant, Pu'er tea has completed a new tasting output, bringing about the aging of white tea, Tieguanyin and other teas, so that Pu'er tea has risen from a general drink to an art drink, becoming an identity symbol of a new generation of wealthy classes. Because of the characteristics of more aged and more fragrant, the industrial chain of Pu'er tea has also been lengthened, from production to consumption, more warehousing, bringing about the rise of the warehousing industry, and then bringing prosperity to the secondary market. For example, Dayi tea is produced in Yunnan, the secondary market for trading is in Guangdong, and the drinking population has also expanded from the Greater Bay Area to the whole country.
Century-old trees, is an important symbol of Yunnan biological diversity, but also the origin of tea plants in China and even the world living fossils, related to the national image, national self-confidence, in Yunnan and means category innovation, popular words are ancient tea trees for Yunnan and even the world to deliver new species, recreate new knowledge, every tea sale is a new cognitive revolution.
The unique ancient tree tea resources are made into commercial tea by tea companies like "Rainforest" and gain a huge market. From big tea trees to ancient tea trees, this is the cultural and creative industry. The tree is still the tree, the leaf is still the leaf, but with cultural power, the consumption brought by it is completely different.
Q: Now that the development of Pu'er tea has attracted much attention, can the Yunnan tea industry say that it has embarked on a different tea road?
Zhou Chonglin: In several large provinces where the tea industry has developed well, Fujian is a channel to occupy. Fujian tea has long been on the board of technology and is the beneficiary of the first wave of e-commerce dividends. In the past, 90% of the tea cities in various places were pioneered by Fujian people, ten tea sellers, and nine out of Fujian. Therefore, Fujian tea is dominated by people and channels, and it is still the case.
Zhejiang tea scientific research and policy advantages go hand in hand, the national character of the Head of the China Tea Research Institute, China Tea Museum and other institutions, almost all concentrated in Zhejiang, Zhejiang universities also have tea-related research institutions, tea discourse power naturally dominates.
Guangdong is an industrial form advantage, and all tea belongs to Guangdong. Historically, Guangzhou Thirteen Lines was the only export place for tea, and now it is also a transit station for major tea categories to go to the whole country.
Yunnan used to be a resource advantage, a supplier of raw materials, and a good quality and low price, but now it has become an advantage in understanding. The new understanding brought by ancient tree tea, the mountains of Yunnan have been rewritten, and the villages that were poor and backward in the past have now become synonymous with high-quality tea. Warehousing brings new cognition, Dongguan warehouse, Kunming warehouse, Hong Kong warehouse, island warehouse... The industrial chain is extending, and new knowledge is emerging in an endless stream.
New understandings will lead to a new industrial revolution, as will electric vehicles.
Q: You have repeatedly called on Yunnan to build a world tea culture center, where does confidence come from?
Zhou Chonglin: In the past, Yunnan presented unique ancient tea tree resources and colorful ethnic tea culture to the world, and now, ancient tea tree resources and ancient ethnic culture are being highly integrated. Yunnan has retained its unique techniques from tea seedlings, planting, maintenance, picking, processing fresh leaves, pressing tea and tasting, which are the living forms of culture since the Tang and Song dynasties. Before, we didn't understand, we didn't know how to say it, but now that we know, we have to cherish it even more.
For example, nursery. Yunnan is now a solid seedling, planted with tea fruits. This is the method that Lu Yu said in the Tea Classic. The survival cycle of this caring tea plant is the biggest secret of Yunnan's ancient tea trees, and it is also the main reason for the rare large tea trees in other places after the Ming and Qing dynasties, and the cutting technology matured very early in China, but yunnan tea farmers have not adopted it.
For example, the maintenance of rattan tea. Rattan tea is to domesticate the tea tree into a slender and long branch like cane or wicker, discard the excess leaves, flowers and fruits, and let the nutrients be concentrated on the head of the tea tree. It is a complete horticultural marvel, polished over hundreds of years by a pair of hands. This way of maintenance requires a lot of human resources, from planting to maintenance are intensive cultivation, its picking skills have been passed down from generation to generation, and to this day it is still in addition to this village, no other village.
Why don't we apply for World Heritage sites with these rattan tea plantations as outstanding horticultural? In the future, Yunnan will not only have a Jingmai camellia cultural heritage, but also many more. Nannuo Mountain not only has a tea king tree, but also a hani tribe that people talk about maintaining tea gardens, and the Hani people have also created a bittersweet tea garden unique to Lao Ban Zhang.
In the past, we only paid attention to the national tea art, and did not fully recognize tea, this knowledge is buried in the mountains, waiting for everyone to dig. The combination of ancient tea gardens and ancient ethnic groups is an inexhaustible resource, and what is Yunnan not a tea culture center? Here, you can find a complete chain of evidence from eating fresh leaves to brewing Kung Fu tea, which is really a living world tea expo garden.
Q: Pu'er tea, green tea, black tea have all been popular, do you think there is a cycle?
Zhou Chonglin: In the past 1,000 years, it was the knowledge of green tea that was popular, which brought about the rise of Huizhou, Jiangsu and Zhejiang tea. In the past 200 years, it was the knowledge of black tea that was popular, and the British brought black tea to the world. In the past 20 years, it is Pu'er tea knowledge that is popular, and what tea will be in the future cannot be determined, but tea popularity must have a cycle.
Q: In addition to Pu'er tea, there are some other teas in Yunnan, and laymen think that tea is very complicated, can you briefly introduce it?
Zhou Chonglin: Tea is produced in all parts of Yunnan Province. Yunnan tea is divided into Dian green, Dian red and Pu'er tea according to the process. In addition, there is oolong tea, and Tengchong has a polar edge oolong. In recent years, Yunnan white tea has also emerged, Jinggu white tea has been widely recognized by the market before, and now the moonlight white of Pu'er Jingmai Mountain is becoming more and more famous.
Dianlu is famous for its Shilixiang of Stone Forest, Baohong Tea of Yiliang, Cool Mill Pot Tea of Baoshan, Longsheng Cui Tea of Pu'er, Big Chestnut Tree of Yunlong, and Steaming Enzyme of Geng Ma. These teas are both local specialty teas and the company's specialty teas.
Dianhong used to be mainly produced in Fengqing County, and now the whole province is doing it, the famous "classic 58", but the category of Dianhong is not good enough, which is a pity. Dianhong is famous in the world, and there is still a lot of room for development.
Q: Understanding tea culture is inseparable from the tea ceremony? What is the use of learning the tea ceremony?
Zhou Chonglin: The tea ceremony is the art of tea, and through the study, understanding and understanding of tea, tea people eventually become tea ceremony artists and make tea orderly, and their path of achievement is no different from any kind of artist's path. That is to say, tea people can only become art if they become artists first.
In the current daily tea drinking behavior, the tea ceremony focuses more on the art of performance, and tea soup is a means of getting close to people. But in Lu Yu's time, his tea ceremony and Yan Zhenqing's calligraphy were on a par with the art of Yan Zhenqing, and Lu Yu was certainly a great artist like Yan Zhenqing.
In a sense, the tea ceremony became the timeline of art, more than a hundred years before painting. Zhang Yanyuan wrote about painting as a history of an art form that assisted in education in the "Records of Famous Paintings of Past Dynasties", and the tea ceremony had been popular in the Tang Dynasty for a hundred years. After the Song Dynasty, the tea ceremony was pushed to the extreme. When Song Huizong was writing, he must have used the brush as a tea raft; and when he fought tea, he must have used the tea raft as a brush. Ink under the mountains, on the water Danqing. We must not only learn how to appreciate Zhao's thin gold body, but also learn to appreciate his tea ceremony art.
As far back as a thousand years ago, Zhang Yanyuan was faced with such a situation, and his family complained that he had made up for his ragged clothes in order to collect calligraphy and paintings: "How can I make up for it all the time for things that are useless?" Zhang Yanyuan replied, "If it is not a useless thing, then can An be happy to have a life?" Contemporary art historian Fan Jingzhong commented on Zhang Yanyuan's sixteen words and made a very important discovery: "It seems to be the first time in the entire history of civilization that art has expressed a concept of supramatism, suggesting an ethical philosophy: art is the model of all human achievements, so it can revise the scale of moral values; in short, art, because it can purify the body and mind, can therefore become an antidote to barbarism and vulgarity." ”
Yunnan network reporter Wang Yonggang