In the spring of the south, the most fragrant is the aroma of tea. A cup of spring tea brews down, and the incomparable wisps of fragrance enter the internal organs. The buds gradually sink into the bottom of the cup, as if to shrink the spring in front of the eyes.
Nanyue Hengshan, the only mountain in the south of the Five Peaks of China, is also the only mountain that produces tea in the Five Mountains, and is famous for its cloud tea. Nanyue Hengshan Mountain, stretching for more than 800 miles, the main peak Zhurong Peak, is located in Nanyue District, Hengyang City, Hunan Province, with an altitude of 1300.25 meters. Nanyue Heng Mountain forest is deep, ancient trees towering, mild and warm climate, rich soil organic matter content, the mountain has 280 days a year cloud and fog, the most suitable for the growth of tea plants, so the name Nanyue cloud mist tea. The yunwu tea of Nanyue Hengshan is listed in the five major cloud teas in China, along with the yunwu tea produced in Guiding, Guizhou, Lushan in Jiangxi, Yandang in Zhejiang and Putuo in Zhejiang.
It is said that Nanyue Yunwu tea is related to the Yandi Shennong clan. Legend has it that in ancient times, one day as the leader of the tribe, the Yandi Shennong clan saw a vermilion bird with red feathers, holding a grass with nine ears in its mouth, constantly shaking the ears of rice in the sky, and in an instant, the birds flew up and down to eat the ears. Shen Nong thought to himself, if there were such a grain in the human world, the people would not be hungry. So he chased after the vermilion bird, all the way from the north to the south.
At the edge of the vast Dongting Lake, Emperor Yan waved the divine whip he carried with him at the vermilion bird, and the whip and the bird fell, and the spikes spread all over the earth, and jiangnan grew green and lush grass seedlings. The vermilion bird turned into a large mountain, stretching for eight hundred miles and lush vegetation. This is today's Eight Hundred Mile South Yue Heng Mountain. Since then, Emperor Yan's footprints have spread all over the 108 peaks of Hengshan Mountain, and he "tasted hundreds of herbs, encountered seventy-two poisons every day, and got tea to solve it", which was regarded as the ancestor of tea by posterity. Therefore, Nanyue Hengshan is also known as the hometown of tea.
Nanyue Yunwu tea, which began about the end of the Western Han Dynasty, has a cultivation history of more than 2,000 years. Nanyue Yunwu tea was called Yueshan tea in ancient times, and The Tang Dynasty tea saint Lu Yu wrote impressively in the "Tea Classic": "The person who tea comes out of the south of the mountain is born in the valley of Hengshan County." These 11 words have firmly established the supremacy of Nanyue Yunwu Tea in China's famous teas. In the Tang Dynasty, Nanyue Yunwu tea was also famous at home and abroad as a "tribute tea". Every spring tea picking season, tea merchants come one after another, going in and out of Nanyue HengShan, which is not bustling. The mountain people of Pilu Cave have just sung tea picking songs, and only a few tea leaves are left in the house.
During the Song Dynasty, Nanyue Yunwu tea was exported to Vietnam. The Song Dynasty's book "Records of the Chefs" wrote: "Hengshan tea (Nanyue Yunwu tea), a huge bunch of cakes, took 100,000 years old, from Xiao Xiangda to Wuling, far away from the toe (present-day Vietnam) people, also often eat it." "The ancient people considered that tea was not easy to transport, so they were all made into tea cakes, worn together with ropes, and hung into a bunch, about eighty pounds. According to this standard calculation, the annual tea production of Nanyue Hengshan should be about one million catties at that time, which shows that the output and scale of Hengshan tea at that time were already quite large.
At the end of the Ming Dynasty and the beginning of the Qing Dynasty, the earliest tea advertisement "Yue Ming Before the Rain" appeared in Nanyue Hengshan. The great thinker Mr. Wang Chuanshan left behind the "Nanyue Tea Picking Poem": "The rice under the mountain fights for the long leaves of the leeks, and the tea in the mountains is fragrant; the team goes up the mountain to collect the evening tea, but the cuckoo is busy."
Nanyue Yunwu tea in Nanyue Hengshan has three major tea producing areas: Pilu Cave, Yanxia Tea Courtyard and Shili Tea Township, which are generally planted in the deep mountains at an altitude of 800-1100 meters. Among them, the most famous is pilu cave.
Located between Zhurong Peak and Zigai Peak, Piludong Tea Garden is a deep canyon of about 10 kilometers long, the oldest tea garden in Nanyue, and the sacred place for the production of tribute tea in history. The Longfeng Creek, formed by the confluence of the Longxi River flowing from zhurong peak in the west and the fengxi stream flowing from zigai peak in the east, flows through the primeval forest of Pilu Cave, rendering the tea mountains very flexible.
The slopes of the Pilu Cave Tea Garden are made of boulders piled up on the mountain to keep the soil from rotting. I can't estimate whether the slope here will take hundreds of thousands to millions of tons of rock to build, and I can't estimate how much sweat was spilled on the monks and tea farmers in the tea gardens during the years when the tea gardens were built.
Yanxia Tea House is located in a mountain pass near the Iron Buddha Temple. Yanxia Tea House is the oldest tea room in Hunan Province, which can be picked in spring, summer summer, autumn leaves, and winter snow. The spring water used to boil tea at Yanxia Tea House comes from the famous Iron Buddha Spring, which is comparable to the French Evian mineral water . In the Yanxia Tea House, drink a cup of Nanyue Yunwu tea produced by the tea garden, look at the ancient trees in the sky, overlook the Nantian Pillar Stone, the clouds are full of mist, and you can also listen to the swaying of green bamboo, the sound of pines and the sound of maple leaves flying in the wind, which is comfortable and pleasant. Wonderland Tea Town, happy to go home.
Shili Tea Township stretches for tens of miles between Huagai Peak and Guanyin Peak, one of the 72 peaks of Nanyue Hengshan Mountain, and is composed of Zhiqing Tea Farm (also known as Huagai Tea Farm) and Shanwan Tea Base of Nanyue Yunwu Tea Industry Company, which is the largest tea-producing area in Nanyue. Shili Tea Township is divided into the southern slope of Qianshan and the northern slope of Houshan mountain by scenic highway, with an altitude of about 900-1100 meters. The road is lined with tea trees, and tea is available along the mountain. From April to early May every year, tea is in the sea of flowers, flowers are in the tea garden, Ten Mile Tea Township, Ten Mile Flower Fragrance, beautiful!
It is understood that Nanyue Yunwu tea is generally picked in the Qingming to the valley rain festival to pick fresh leaves, fresh leaf standards for bud core, one bud one leaf, one bud two leaves, processing is divided into spreading, killing green, fresh wind, first kneading, first drying, striping, tight strips, lifting, spreading, shaping, baking and other more than ten processes. Nanyue Yunwu tea shape is very beautiful, and pointed and long, like the tip of a gun, after brewing the tip is facing upwards, two leaf petals, obliquely spread like a flag, green and fresh, sinking in the water, the aroma is strong, drink a refreshing spleen. After many brews, the soup is still clear and the aftertaste is endless.
Spring breeze ten miles, a spring tea. This April, let's come to Nanyue Hengshan together to start a journey to find incense and keep a piece of spring light soaked in tea!
Text/Figure Naran small fish