Mr. Wu Juenong once said: "In my life, I am most concerned about the lives of farmers and their production. At present, there are many difficulties for tea farmers in the countryside, and I hope that you will go to the countryside to see and help them solve their difficulties. In particular, it is necessary to help tea farmers do a good job in scientifically growing and making tea, increase economic income, and make tea farmers rich day by day. The future of China's tea industry is very promising, tea has developed, and Chinese tea culture will also flourish. ”
Wu Juenong, formerly known as Wu Rongtang, is a native of Shangyu, Zhejiang, who was born in Shuxiang Mendi and changed his name to Juenong because he was determined to dedicate himself to agriculture. He once said: "If the Chinese peasants want to turn over, they can only become conscious of themselves" and "If the peasants want to stand up and struggle for revolution, they must have self-consciousness.", so he resolutely decided to change his name to Juenong. In its name, it not only calls itself an enlightened peasant, but also contains the dual meaning of being determined to enlighten the peasants to be enlightened.
▲Wu Juenong, the contemporary Chinese tea saint
Mr. Wu Juenong is a famous agronomist, tea scientist, educator, social activist and patriotic democrat in China, and also the founder of the rejuvenation and development of China's tea industry. After the founding of the People's Republic of China, he was appointed deputy minister of agriculture of the Government Council of the Central People's Government, and concurrently served as the first general manager of the China Tea Company, and soon established a relatively complete tea production and marketing system. He has been engaged in the research, teaching, leadership and management of China's agricultural economy and tea all his life, and has been pursuing social progress and people's happiness all his life. At the age of 90, he published a "Tea Classic Review", which is known as the "New Tea Classic of the Twentieth Century", which made outstanding contributions to the history of contemporary tea civilization, and also made him crowned as the "Contemporary Tea Sage" before his death, which was unanimously supported by all Chinese tea people and deeply respected by international tea lovers.
The Chinese tea industry in the twentieth century has experienced a very difficult, tortuous, long and enterprising process from extreme exhaustion to rejuvenation and development, and China's tea industry has withstood the fierce shocks of that era, and its changes are great, there are many dangers and obstacles, the achievements are extensive, the achievements are grand, and the appearance is refreshed, which is unprecedented in any century in history. The Chinese tea people represented by Wu Juenong have shown a different cultural outlook from the traditional Chinese tea people in the past, and China's tea civilization has also begun to enter the process of modernization in an all-round way.
As a teenager, Wu Juenong was admitted to the Zhejiang Provincial Secondary Agricultural Technical School (the predecessor of Zhejiang Agricultural University) and began to study tea. Through reading and studying in school, he learned about the long history of Chinese tea production, and knew that China's tea products had been famous in the world, and a sense of national pride was born, but since the 18th century, after britain supported the development of the tea industry in colonial India, Sri Lanka and other countries and gradually took away the Chinese tea export market, the status of Chinese tea in the world was declining, for this reason, he was determined to revitalize the motherland's tea industry and strive for life.
In 1919, with the strong desire of industry to save the country and promote tea through science and technology, Wu Juenong went to Japan to study at public expense. He immersed himself in the study of Japan's advanced science and technology, collected and studied the cultivation, manufacture, trade and other historical documents of tea-producing tea in various tea-producing countries in the world, hoping to bring back the knowledge he had learned to the motherland and revitalize China's tea industry. But when he found that many tea literature at that time had distorted historical facts, he suddenly cried out: "A decaying country, everything will be plundered!" And even if it is plundered, no plants that are born in our country will be changed for no reason! ...... The darkest and most painful thing in academia is nothing more than that! Therefore, in 1922, based on the records of tea in ancient Chinese books, he wrote the article "Examination of the Origin of Tea Plants", which used rigorous historical facts to argue that tea trees originated in China. The text reads: "The Shennong Materia Medica Yun, 'Tea tastes bitter, and when it is drunk, it makes people think, lie down less, lighten their bodies, and see clearly', when they were more than 2700 years BC,...... The ancient tea drinking in China can be summarized here,...... The discovery of wild tea plants in Asaph, India, was first in India in 1826, when it was independent, and the second time after India was annexed. This move not only refuted some foreign arguments that deliberately distorted the origin of tea plants, but once the article was published, it also attracted the attention and attention of Chinese and foreign scholars, and Wu Juenong first showed his talent.
In 1931, Zou Bingwen, a Chinese agronomist who was then the director of the Shanghai Commodity Inspection Bureau, invited Wu Juenong's talent to organize tea export inspections and appointed him as the technical director and director of the tea department. In the seven years of the Commodity Inspection Bureau, Wu Juenong organized the compilation of China's first export tea inspection standards, making important contributions to the development of China's tea industry. Wu Juenong believes that "in order to comprehensively improve the quality of our tea, we must use scientific methods to start from planting, picking, manufacturing and storage." Under his organization and leadership, a group of tea scientists disregarded the difficulties of conditions and went deep into the vast tea areas of Anhui, Zhejiang, Jiangxi, Fujian, Taiwan and other provinces to investigate and investigate, and after mastering the first-hand information, he cooperated with Mr. Hu Haochuan to write a 130,000-word book "China Tea Industry Rejuvenation Plan", which was published and distributed at the Shanghai Press in 1935. This is a strategic plan to revitalize China's tea industry, which has attracted great attention from the agricultural and tea circles, and many of the arguments in the book still have certain reference value.
▲ Wu Juenong took a group photo with members of the China Rural Economic Research Association
In 1987, Wu Juenong edited the "Tea Classic Review", which is known as the "New Tea Classics of the 20th Century" and "Milestones in Tea Science", which began to be written in 1979, and took more time than expected due to some twists and turns in the middle. Finally, at the age of 90, Wu Juenong was published and distributed. The "Tea Classic" written by Lu Yu in the Tang Dynasty has been written for more than 1200 years and is the world's first tea science work. The book has a detailed discussion of the history of tea, tea plant planting, tea manufacturing, frying, boiling, drinking, tea effect, etc., and still has high reference value. But after all, it is a book from more than a thousand years ago, the original text of the "Tea Classic" is not easy to understand, and some of the contents are also debatable, so Wu Juenong spent many years studying the "Tea Classic", and wrote it into the "Tea Classic Review" after several twists and turns.
The Commentary on the Tea Classics has translations and commentaries; there are scientific and technological knowledge and historical materials, which not only comment on Lu Yu's "Tea Classic", but also other ancient nong (tea) books, which is a masterpiece of studying ancient Chinese tea culture. Lu Dingyi, former vice chairman of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, specially prefaced the work, saying: "Mr. Wu Juenong's "Commentary on the Tea Classic" is the new "Tea Classic" of the 20th century. If Lu Yu is the 'tea god', then I think Mr. Wu Juenong is the 'tea saint' of contemporary China, and I think he deserves it. "The Tea Classic Review" can be called a strong stroke in the history of Chinese tea science, and it will refill the glory of Wu Juenong's great life.
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Title: Commentary on the Tea Sutra (Outer Six Kinds)
Author: Wu Juenong
New release date: June 2021
Mr. Wu Juenong's "Commentary on the Tea Classic" is a landmark work in tea science. Wu Juenong borrowed the "Tea Classic" to sort out ancient tea literature, present the whole picture of China's three-thousand-year tea history, summarize the ancient tea experience, and base on the current situation of the development of the tea industry at that time. The "Tea Classic Review" embodies Wu Juenong's tea spirit at multiple levels and from multiple angles, overlapping cultural, literary, folklore, political, economic, international, domestic, botanical, biological, pharmacological, and tea knowledge, and is the first monograph of the Chinese people to comment on the "Tea Classic". Wu Juenong uses modern tea theory, based on the current development of the tea industry, to understand the ancient tea experience in two places, and use the ancient for the present, so that the tradition has a new practical significance. On the basis of adjusting the typesetting of the old edition of the China Agricultural Publishing House, the new edition of "Commentary on the Tea Classics (Six Kinds of Outer)" also adds six articles, namely" "Hunan Tea History", "Sichuan Tea History", "Examination of the Origin of Tea Plants", "China's Southwest Region is the Origin of Tea Trees in the World", and "A Brief Discussion on the Origin of Tea Plants", all of which are mr. Wu Juenong's more important articles.
▲Wu Juenong Memorial Hall
Mr. Wu Juenong is a banner of contemporary Chinese tea industry. He is the representative figure of the Chinese nation for the rejuvenation of Chinese tea for more than a hundred years, and it is his "Chinese tea industry reform fang zhun" that promotes the advancement of Chinese tea with the times; it is his "Chinese peasant problem" that first pays attention to the "three rural problems"; it is his "China Tea Industry Revival Plan" that issues the first cry to realize the "Chinese tea dream"; it is he who edits the "Tea Classic Review", which systematically summarizes the evolution and development of tea since the Tang Dynasty, from experience to theory, paving the way for the study of tea history.
Mr. Wu Juenong has great ambition, pursues truth, reform and innovation, patriotic rejuvenation of tea, and has made historic outstanding contributions to the tea industry of the motherland! He is a tea historian and tea government reformer in China; a practitioner of tea foreign trade; the founder of tea export origin inspection; the pioneer of higher education in the tea industry; and a pioneer in tea scientific research. Under his lifelong and consistent efforts, he examined the origin and corrected his name; built an experimental field and developed an industry; cultivated talents and run colleges and universities; rejuvenated tea with science and technology and rose again; slept lions woke up and invigorated the wind; and enabled the Chinese tea industry to develop rapidly.