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Tea lovers often ask how the "Seven Sons Cake Tea" in Pu'er Tea came from, and why it is called "Seven Sons" instead of "Eight Sons" and "Nine Sons".
For such a problem, Xiao Zhi can only be described as "angle tricky". Now the tea friends brain hole is getting bigger and bigger, dare to ask anything, small understand the box and cabinet to check the relevant information, and finally found the answer. ↓↓
As a Pu'er tight-pressed tea, qizi cake tea still has an intuitive understanding of its appearance and regulations. But the origin of the name is not necessarily clear. Let's let Xiao Understand come to popularize science for you, the old driver starts the car and sits firmly.
Why the Seven Sons Cake is seven cake tea, everyone hears the most is related to the weight. One cake of tea is 357 grams, and seven cakes is 2499 grams, about 2.5 kilograms, which is convenient for the old horse gang to transport. The origin of the name "Seven Sons Cake" also has its own evolutionary history.
"Seven Sons Round Tea"
Seven is an auspicious number in China, symbolizing many children, many places, many blessings, many lives, many jubilee, many Lu, many fortunes, and the seven sons are reunited and complete. In fact, the regulation of Qizi round tea began in the Qing Dynasty, and there is a record in the "Great QingHui Canonical Cases" that "Yongzheng thirteen years (1735 AD) was accurate, and Yunnan merchants sold tea, which was a cylinder for every seven circles, weighing forty-nine taels (about 1.8 kg today)". At that time, the regulation of Qizi tea was stipulated, but there was no specific name for "Qizi Cake". On the contrary, the title of round tea has been retained.
The tea shape of the Qing Dynasty has a certain relationship with weight. For example, there is a small round tea shaped like a bun head, which is relatively light in weight, and is packaged in five pieces, which was called "small five zi round tea" in the late Qing Dynasty. In order to distinguish, people call every seven round tea packaging forms for a barrel "seven round teas".
In the Republic of China period, some documents can see the name of "Seven Sons Cake". However, in all the formal statistical reports and telegrams of Yunnan Chinese tea, the title of "round tea" or "seven sons of round tea" is still used. Because the title of "cake tea" at that time specifically referred to the small cake tea sold to Weixi and Nujiang, called "tube tea", they were also seven one-barrel packaging.
Seven sons of "round" tea finally into a "cake"
Entering the new China, the newly established China Tea Company took over the Yunnan China Tea Company, and tea began to be state-run. The tea factories affiliated to the Yunnan Tea Company began to use the "Eight Middle" trademark of china tea company to produce "china tea brand" round tea.
▲Chinese tea brand round tea
The first authorization period of the Zhongcha brand trademark was from March 1, 1952 to February 28, 1972. Therefore, in the early 1970s, Yunnan Tea Import and Export Company hoped to find a more appealing, more conducive to publicity and promotion of the name, so they changed "round" to "cake", and finally formed the name of "Yunnan Qizi Cake Tea".
This change is comprehensive and historic. Since then, the tea brand has begun to fade out, and the title of round tea has gradually withdrawn from the historical stage, and finally achieved the hegemony of the seven-son cake. That is to say, the words Yunnan Qizi Cake Tea printed on the wrapping paper we can see now are all tea products from 1972 onwards. As for the boxed Qizi Cake Tea in the 1960s, Mr. Geng Jianxing once showed us a sample of Qizi Cake Tea in "Pu'er Tea Continuation", which was produced by Kunming Tea Factory, but only this cake tea was contained in the box. Otherwise, there is no physical outflow. Therefore, it is impossible to judge whether there was a large number of "Seven Sons Cake Tea" production before 1972.
▲ 1961 Seven Sons Cake Tea Sample
Seven cylinders was originally a standard formulated by the Qing government to standardize measurement, production and transportation. But now it seems that only in the early and middle Qing Dynasties, as well as in the era of planned economy after the founding of the People's Republic of China, it has a normative effect. Once it enters the liberalization market, in addition to the product name and brand value, the meaning of the quality and weight it represents is gradually blurred.
Resources:
From Daqing to Chinese Tea, Yang Kai, Liu Yan, Li Xiaomei, Yunnan People's Publishing House, 2008
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