Tea Culture Column Series (13)
Producer: Baopu Yiwen Studio
A decaying country, everything will be plundered! And even if the plunder is even worse, the 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!
——Wu Juenong, the founder of the revival and development of China's modern tea industry
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 Mr. Wu Juenong is the "tea saint" of contemporary China, and I think he deserves it.
———— Lu Dingyi, former vice chairman of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference
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When Chinese tea dominated the world, the Qing Empire became the world's largest GDP, and Wu Bingjian, who was engaged in the tea export business, became the world's richest man; when the British stole Chinese tea seeds and announced (British) India was the world's tea origin, China's tea exports plummeted. If you think that the entanglement between China's national fortune and tea is over, it is too underestimated to see the importance of this green gold in history. During the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression in China, tea became an important material for China to exchange arms from other countries, and the tea people at that time linked the revitalization of Chinese tea exports with the salvation of the people; after the founding of New China, the first foreign trade company was the "China Tea Export Company" directly under the central government, and the cultivation, production and sales of tea were elevated to the national strategic height, successfully breaking through the blockade and embargo imposed by the United States on New China, and creating a large amount of foreign exchange for the country. A small leaf thus became a weapon of China's War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression and the anti-US blockade.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="15" >, a 25-year-old British-Japanese scholar, justified the name of tea's motherland </h1>
Exactly one hundred years ago, a young man born in Shangyu County, Zhejiang Province, was engaged in tea research at the tea test site of Japan's Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries as an official international student, and the people around him did not understand why this student, who had always been intelligent and courteous, suddenly became extremely angry, and they would not have thought that this young man who had started the case would become the first vice minister of agriculture of New China and lead the revival of Tea in China.
In his later years, Wu Juenong
The above-mentioned young students are the later "contemporary tea saints" Wu Juenong, formerly known as Wu Rongtang, born in the Shuxiang Mendi family, because Shangyu County has been a tea town since ancient times, Wu Rongtang has heard about it since childhood, and has developed a strong interest in tea. At 17:00, Wu Rongtang was admitted to the Zhejiang Jiazhong Agricultural School (the predecessor of Zhejiang Agricultural University) and began to study tea science, and he was determined to dedicate himself to agriculture (tea industry), so he changed his name to Juenong. By this time, he had clearly realized that the Chinese tea that had once been famous all over the world was no longer brilliant, and the British Empire officially replaced China as the world's largest tea producer and exporter (india and Ceylon were British territories at that time).
Located in Shizuoka Prefecture, Japan, Makinohara Terrace is home to japan's largest tea plantation
In 1919, Wu Juenong, holding the strong desire of industry to save the country and revitalize tea through science and technology, went to Japan to study at official expenses, and studied tea at the "Makinohara" National Tea Experimental Field in Shizuoka Prefecture, Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, Japan.
As a result, what he saw!
· In 1838, British Major Bruce (R. Bruce) published a pamphlet claiming that he had found wild tea plants in Beesam, Assam Province, during his stay in India in 1824, and 108 wild tea plants in Assam Province in the following years, to prove that India was the origin of tea plants, and falsely concluded that Chinese tea was the descendant of Indian tea. (This has led to a century-old "Dragon Elephant Controversy" over the origin of tea in the world, and I will use a separate article to describe the process of original source removal in detail.) ）
In 1877, the Englishman Samuel Bail-don published the book Tea In Assam, arguing that "India is the origin of tea plants."
In 1903, the British botanist John H. Blake wrote in his Tea Merchant's Guide that "there are many scholars ... It is argued that the origin of tea is the United Kingdom rather than China. ”
The British botanist A. Ibsen Jabbetson also said in the book "Tea" that "china only cultivates tea trees, can not find absolute wild tea trees, only Assam found wild tea trees called Theahaqmh ... Botanists regard it as the ancestor of all tea plants. ”
The Great Dictionary of Japan, published in 1911, says that "the birthplace of tea is in the East Indies." ”
Seeing all these absurd remarks, Wu Juenong was extremely angry: "A decaying country, everything will be plundered!" And even if the plunder is even worse, the 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! ”
In order to fight back against this distortion of the facts. Wu Juenong consulted a large number of ancient Chinese books on tea (including poems), quoted a large amount of historical evidence, and at the same time analyzed and sorted out international materials, and wrote an article entitled "Examination of the Origin of Tea Plants", which was published in the first issue (no. 37 of the total) in 1922. The irrefutable facts of Wu Juenong show that the discovery and utilization of tea trees in China are thousands of years earlier than in India, and China is the origin of tea in the world.
This article is the first in China to systematically refute the monograph on the deliberate distortion of the origin of tea plants by some people in foreign countries, and it is also a text denouncing the economic and cultural plunder carried out by the colonialists. Wu Juenong's article attracted widespread attention from scholars in related fields at home and abroad at that time. Wu Juenong, who was just beginning to show talent, also emerged in the tea industry at that time.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="119" > second, tea for armament</h1>
After returning from studying abroad, Wu Juenong held a position in the Industrial Department of the National Government, and he began to put into practice his ideal of reviving the tea industry. In 1931, Zou Bingwen, then director of the Shanghai Commodity Inspection Bureau, because of wu Juenong's talent, invited him to organize the inspection of tea exports, and appointed him as the director of the tea supervision department of the Shanghai Commodity Inspection Bureau.
▲ Wu Juenong served as a technical minister in the Shanghai Commodity Inspection Bureau and sent him to inspect the instructions
In the 7 years of the Commodity Inspection Bureau, Wu Juenong compiled China's first export tea inspection standards, and pioneered the inspection system of China's tea export ports and places of origin. At the same time, he also established tea testing grounds and tea improvement fields in Zhejiang, Anhui, Jiangxi and other tea-producing provinces.
Wu Juenong is in the commodity inspection office
At that time, it was the trough period of China's tea foreign trade, especially the export of black tea plummeted, showing an unprecedented bleak scene. In view of this situation, from the autumn of 1934 to November 1935, he successively went to Japan, India, Ceylon, Indonesia, Britain, France and the Soviet Union to investigate in detail the production and sales of tea in relevant countries, as well as the international market for tea, and after returning to China, he wrote "The Tea Industry of India and Tin", "The Tea Industry of The Netherlands and India", "The Way Out of Chinese Tea in the International Commercial War", "The Prospect of Chinese Tea's Foreign Trade", "The Plan for the Revival of China's Tea Industry" and other treatises. In 1937, Wu Juenong co-authored and published The Problem of China's Tea Industry with Fan Hejun (remember this important figure, which we will cover in detail in the next article on the Menghai Tea Factory).
Immediately after, the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression broke out, and Wu Juenong actively participated in the Anti-Japanese National Salvation Movement. The fight against the Japanese Kou required a lot of financial support, and the income from the tea trade was one of the main sources of military expenses for the War of Resistance, and Wu Juenong was engaged in the tea production and marketing work of the Trade Committee of the National Government during this period. After the fall of Shanghai, China's largest tea export market, he worked hard to open up foreign trade in tea.
In 1938, Wu Juenong led a group of tea people to Wuhan to start preparations for trade with the Soviet Union, exchanging tea with the Soviet Union for equipment and weapons urgently needed for the War of Resistance. In the same year, Wu Juenong proposed and promulgated by the National Government the "Outline of Measures for The Management of National Tea Exports", which implemented the unified purchase and sale of tea throughout the country.
The early Menghai Tea Factory was originally called Fohai Tea Factory
Also in 1938, when Wu Juenong was in Wuhan to negotiate with Soviet representatives, Fan Hejun, who had co-authored "China's Tea Industry Problems" with Wu Juenong, rushed to Yunnan and led more than 90 people to build the Menghai Tea Factory.
In 1939, the export of Chinese tea jumped to the first place in China's export commodities at that time, not only exceeding the performance of the barter contract to the Soviet Union, but also exchanging a certain amount of foreign exchange from Western countries, making great contributions to supporting the War of Resistance Against Japan.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="120" > third, cultivate tea talents in the fire of war</h1>
Perhaps it is the academic experience of the Chinese tea industry that has left an overly profound impact on Wu Juenong, who attaches great importance to cultivating Chinese tea successors.
In 1939, when the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression was raging, Wu Juenong, then director of the Tea Department of the Trade Committee of the Ministry of Finance and assistant and chief technician of the China Tea Company, suggested that a tea major be established at Fudan University (then submitted as the Department of Tea Industry, approved by the Ministry of Education, renamed the "Tea Group of the Department of Agronomy"), which included a four-year undergraduate university, a two-year tea industry specialization department and a tea research room.
The war was worse for the Chinese tea industry, which was already in a low period, and in order to "make the poor and weak Chinese tea industry a little angry", Wu Xuenong organized a manual translation of the American William Ukus's tea book "The Complete Book of Tea" during this period. This is a revolution in the thinking of Chinese tea after thousands of years of development, and some people believe that it is "a milestone on the road to China's tea reform".
In order to further cultivate more professional scientific research and technical personnel, it is imperative to establish a professional tea research institute. In 1941, the Pacific War broke out, and all of China's foreign trade ports were occupied by the Japanese Kou, tea exports came to a halt, and tea production plummeted. Under the appointed by the Trade Committee of the Ministry of Finance, Wu Juenong was ordered to lead a group of experts and scholars such as Jiang Yunsheng, Ye Yuanding, and Wang Zenong to establish China's first state-level tea research institute, the WuyiShan Tea Research Institute, and Wu Juenong served as the editor-in-chief and published excellent tea academic journals such as "Tea Research" and "Wuyi Communications", which cultivated a group of tea professional and technical personnel with a high level for the rejuvenation of China's tea industry.
Wang Lan, vice president of the Guangdong Tea Culture Promotion Association and founder of Guangdong Sipong Tea Industry Co., Ltd. Ming Liufu Tea House, pointed out that at that time, in order to prevent the interruption of foreign trade, the tea leaves were not picked, and the tea trees were aging, Wu Juenong launched a tea tree renewal campaign to promote the government to issue renewal loans to farmers to ensure that the tea gardens were always new, which preserved the flame of hope for the Chinese tea industry, which was dying in the war.
Fourth, green tea was transformed into black tea, and successfully broke through the BLOCKADE and embargo of the United States
On October 1, 1949, at the founding ceremony of new China, Wu Juenong stood behind Chairman Mao and witnessed the arrival of a new era, and he also became the first vice minister of China's Ministry of Agriculture. After hundreds of years of war, China is poor and white, and everything is in ruins to be rebuilt, and Wu Juenong, who has just taken office, will discuss the establishment of China's first foreign trade company, China Tea Export Company (under the leadership of the Central Trade Department), who will also serve as vice minister of trade, Yao Yilin, deputy minister of trade, and Lin Haiyun, director of the General Office, and other comrades to discuss the establishment of China's first foreign trade company, the China Tea Industry Export Company (under the leadership of the Central Trade Department).
In the complicated changes in the international situation at that time, he quickly signed tea trade contracts with the Soviet Union and other countries; stepped up the organization of tea purchase and processing, fulfilled barter debts; and actively carried out trade in the capitalist market to promote accumulated tea; vigorously customized tea machinery and prepared various types of tea factories in major tea areas; and actively established and expanded tea teaching and scientific research institutions in various provinces.
Less than a year after the founding of New China, the Korean War began, and the United States imposed a blockade and embargo on China, and the situation was extremely grim. In response to the US blockade, Wu Juenong adopted contingency measures such as green tea reform into black tea, once again using Chinese tea as a weapon, breaking out a way of life in the international arena, and relying on tea exports to exchange urgently needed materials and foreign exchange for New China.
In 1978, after studying the world tea market, Wu Juenong personally inspected the tea industry resources of Yunnan, Guizhou, Guangdong, Guangxi, Sichuan and other provinces (regions), and advocated the vigorous development of red crushed tea. He proposed to establish a production base in the south.
A number of high-quality tea production bases have been established in many places in southern China, and the quality and quantity have been greatly improved. At this time, Wu Juenong began to pay attention to the tea trading link again. Wu Juenong advocated the adoption of the encouragement method of low taxes, tax exemptions and even subsidies in foreign tea-producing countries, and put forward suggestions for reducing or waiving tea taxes, which attracted the attention of relevant departments and partially adopted them.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="121" >4, the "Tea Sutra Review" written in his later years is known as a contemporary tea sage</h1>
In 1987, Wu Juenong published the last work of his life with important academic value, the Commentary on the Tea Classic. The book makes a detailed translation and comprehensive and scientific commentary on Lu Yu's "Tea Classic" of the Tang Dynasty, and is full of Wu Juenong's profound tea practical experience and theoretical precipitation.
Lu Dingyi, then vice chairman of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, specially prefaced the work, saying: "Mr. Wu Juenong's "Commentary on the Tea Classics" is the 'New Tea Classics of the 20th Century', Mr. Wu Juenong has been engaged in the tea industry all his life, is knowledgeable, experienced, rigorous, far-sighted, and upright. If Lu Yu is the 'tea god', then Mr. Wu Juenong is the 'tea saint' of contemporary China, and I think he deserves it. ”