On the evening of January 16, the TV series "Mr. Crisis" starring Huang Xiaoming and Cai Wenjing was renamed "Emergency Public Relations", and the successor "Flowing Golden Years" was on the hot search after it was broadcast on CCTV-8. The drama tells how Lin Zhongshuo (Huang Xiaoming), a journalist-turned-expert, faces one tricky crisis public relations incident after becoming a crisis public relations expert. It is worth mentioning that the whole drama was filmed in Chengdu, such as the Intangible Cultural Heritage Expo Park, the 339 Tianfu Panda Tower, the Tianfu Interchange, the Shuangliu International Airport, Taikoo Li, kuanzhai alley, Du Fu Caotang... These landmarks familiar to Chengdu people are painted one by one, showing a new image of Chengdu's beautiful and livable park city.
In recent years, due to Chengdu's unique cultural heritage and geographical conditions, many film and television projects have been filmed here, such as "The Best You in the World", "Lady Fluttering Fist", "Youth Fight", "Good Luck Mud" and so on. Since the background board is Chengdu, the director will of course consider where it can represent Chengdu, or which stylized buildings let people know that it is Chengdu at a glance. Among them, Sichuan-style tea houses must be indispensable.
One side of the tea table, a cup of tea, a few bamboo chairs, three or two friends, can "pick ears" to sniff melon seeds, can talk about business, can make friends, can "swing the dragon gate array". Chengdu's teahouses have a long history and are also the places that best reflect the connotation of Chengdu's leisure culture.
▲Heming Tea House in Chengdu People's Park (Lv Jia / Photo)
"There are few sunny days on the head, but there are many tea houses in front of you", looking at Chengdu, tea houses are scattered all over the city. Seven things to open the door, chai rice oil salt sauce vinegar tea, and for Chengdu people, it seems that tea should be put first.
The famous writer Satin said: "I have been back to my hometown for half a month. Or to be precise, it has been half a month since I returned to the teahouse..." Regardless of whether his tone is positive or negative, or sarcastic or teasing, Chengdu is such a slow and inflexible city, and the teahouses on the streets are the best proof.
The city is said to consume tens of thousands of tons of tea each year. Wandering around Chengdu, whether it's a bustling commercial hub, a bustling residential neighborhood, or a buzzing farmers' market, you don't have to be amazed at the high reproduction rate of teahouses. You will find that even if it is overwhelming, every tea shop is indispensable to the support of a group of idle tribes. Drinking tea, rubbing hemp, swinging the dragon gate array, lazy sun, lazy mood, lazy rhythm, lazy life, day after day, I don't know what night and night, roughly the life of Chengdu people. If you come from an excited tribe such as Shanghai, you may be even more restless in the face of such a "depraved" state of life.
And this leisure is innate. Living in Chengdu does not need to worry too much, the rich land, the warm and humid climate, let the seeds sprinkled in the ground will grow on their own. For thousands of years, nature has taken care of this land abnormally and the farming culture of "half a year busy, half a year idle", so that Chengdu people have been accustomed to soaking in the aroma of flower tea in one roll and three openings since ancient times, and the tea house has become an important part of Chengdu's life destiny.
▲After drinking tea, pick an ear and enjoy the comfort of life
Exactly when the Chengdu Tea House started is still uncertain. During the Western Jin Dynasty, there were tea porridge sellers in Chengdu, and by the Tang Dynasty, tea houses came into being. The Fengshi Wenzhi Records say: "From Zou, Qi, Cang, and Di, gradually to Jingyi." The city opens more shops, sencha is sold, do not ask about the customs, and invest money to drink. "Not far from Chang'an, Jincheng (Chengdu), the bustling Guanjiu prefecture, is naturally no exception, and there have long been tea houses selling tea and medicine. After the Ming and Qing dynasties, Chengdu teahouses spread throughout urban and rural areas, and teahouses were free places for people to spend leisure, nap, pluck out ears and pedicures, fight birds and buy cats, play cards and fortune telling, and perform books, yangqin, qingyin, and juggling; teahouses are also folk exchanges for pimping, talking about trading, and are also folk halls for reasoning, compensating for gifts, and judging justice. Among the tea guests, there are palace gentry merchants with robes and horse coats, there are big brothers who wear shorts and shorts, there are boss treasurers who run small businesses, there are three religions and nine streams of characters who wear crooked hats and wear slanted clothes, there are broad princes who carry bird cages and kou yinchuan opera, there are also small traders who sell along the streets, locals, Xiajiang people, east and west blend; Lao Guang, Lao Shaan, and the north and south are gathered. People who eat morning tea run to the tea house at dawn, and the hall greets the tea guests, especially the local gentlemen and merchants with faces, scrambling to pay for the tea for acquaintances. There is a kind of tea that does not give money, this generation does not dare to sit in the hall of the bright and bright, but takes advantage of the departure of the tea guests, the tea house is too late to take away the residual tea, and take the opportunity to go up to the top and drink. There is no rule of eviction of guests in the tea house, as long as the tea guest is willing, a bowl of tea sits for a day, and the church is not wrong, so people call eating tea and sitting in the tea house.
▲Heming Tea House in Chengdu People's Park (Zheng Xiaofei /Photo)
Chengdu people can feast their ears when they sit in the tea house: playing the drum, singing Sichuan opera, saying commentaries, singing music, playing money boards, it is really "the sound of gongs, drums, sandalwood, the sound of the ear, the tone of the continent, the tune, the yangqin tune, the tune is happy" Neighborhood tea shops, a table for three or five people, a cup of tea, a few plates of melon seeds and peanuts, talking about the world, commenting on the past and the present, state affairs and family affairs, neighborhood short and long, social news, and human sophistication, can become a topic. One person speaks, and everyone listens, so it is not lively. And as soon as you enter the teahouse, you can find your own feelings, as if everyone will brag, everyone is Kanye, the sky is south and the sea, all kinds of things, say some witty words, say some after-a-break, complain, everyone laughs, and the sullenness, resentment, and unfairness in the chest are all gone. In this way, the beauty of the tea house is not only in listening, but especially in speaking. Some people say that Chengdu Tea House has five major characteristics: tea, tea set, tea pot, tea chair, and tea mixer. Among the five characteristics, the most representative one is the tea blender.
The tea mixer is also known as Mo Shi, Tang Qi, and Dr. Tea, and can be called the soul of the tea house. No matter how many visitors there are, it is he who greets and sits down, and can arrange to the most appropriate place according to the identity of the visitor. No matter how crowded, he can come and go freely, and the tea mixed with water is just right. Senior tea doctors have their own tricks, only to see him carry a pot in one hand, dripping water without spilling; the other hand brings more than a dozen pairs of tea sets, flat and stable. The guest sat down, and the tea boat in his hand was thrown to the table, just right in front of each guest. What is even more magical is that a foot or two away from the table, a steaming white water column, volleying down in the air, impartial, injected into each person's tea bowl, no more, no less, just eight or nine minutes. Drinking tea in a tea house, meeting a tea mixing master, you can feast your eyes and get a comfortable enjoyment.
▲ Every corner of Chengdu's teahouses is full of people
There are also many contemporary literary works written about Chengdu Teahouse, such as Chengdu writer Sha Ting's novel "In Its Fragrant Tea House", which has been put on the screen, and Zhou Wen's "A Tea Shop" and "Tea Bags" by The Xingjing writer Zhou Wen in Ya'an, Li Haoren's "Backwater Weilan" and Chen Jin's "Chengdu Tea Shop" have also written about the teahouse. In the field of literary and artistic creation, if you want to write a little Sichuan flavor, you have to consider writing tea, and the shortcut is to "brew" the tea house. As Li Jieren described in the late Qing Dynasty: "Tea shop, this is a special scene in Chengdu." The whole city does not know how many, on average, there is always one in a street. There are large and small, and most of the small ones have twenty or so tables on the bunks; the large ones are in the doorway, or in the temple, or in the ancestral hall, or in any public office, and the tables are always more than forty. Outsiders also often compare Chengdu teahouses to other regions. For example, a Westerner found that in Chengdu," there were "restaurants and tea bars, open across the street, which had the same function as bars in England, but did not have the same ills as bars." Friends are there to party and make small talk." He also noticed that "most of the business is done in teahouses."
The description of the Chengdu tea house is also the people from other provinces who came to Chengdu. When the famous educator Shu Xincheng came to Chengdu in the 1920s, he was most impressed by "the special leisure of the people's life here". After the outbreak of the all-out War of Resistance, this way of life did not change much. When the left-wing writer Xiao Jun arrived in Chengdu in 1938, he was surprised by the number of tea houses, and he did not exaggerate and exclaimed: "Ten steps of willow in Jiangnan, ten steps of tea houses in Chengdu." Wu Zhihui, a Kuomintang veteran who studied in France, also said in 1939: "There are as many tea houses in Chengdu as there are cafes in Paris." He Manzi, a famous contemporary writer and literary critic, recalled: "When the tea house was prosperous, when I was young, I thought that Jiangnan was the most; a little longer, when I arrived in Yangzhou, I knew that it was more prosperous in Jiangnan; and when I arrived in Chengdu during the War of Resistance Against Japan, I first sighed the grandeur of the tea house in the world, which was in Western Shuhu!" He Manzi was a native of Jiangnan, and except for the wartime chengdu and the years after he was sent to the northwest after the anti-rightism, he spent almost his entire life in Jiangnan, but the Chengdu tea house is one of the themes he often writes, vividly recording his experience and observations in the Chengdu tea house. In fact, He Manzi is just one of many foreigners who have a special love for Chengdu teahouses, they are deeply infected by Chengdu's rich teahouse culture, even if it is a short teahouse experience, it has left them with endless memories and unlimited reverie. (Source: Tea House: Public Life and The Microcosm of Chengdu, 1900-1950, Wang Di/Author Social Science Literature Publishing House, Tea House Culture Jin Kaicheng/Editor-in-Chief Jilin Literature and History Publishing House, Tea Ceremony Huaisi/Wen)