The Origin and Allusions of Chaoshan Kung Fu Tea

Brief introduction of congou tea:

Kung fu tea is a kind of tea tasting fashion in Chaoshan area, which is famous for its uniqueness and exquisiteness. The so-called congou tea means that the way of making tea is extremely exquisite, which requires a certain amount of effort to operate, and the operation must be very "hard" (fine meaning).

The basic characteristics of congou tea can be summarized in one sentence: soak oolong tea in small pots and cups. The small teacups in the teapot can not only keep the fragrance of tea, but also because drinking congou is often not for quenching thirst, but for recreation and enjoyment, and as an important means of welcoming guests. It is often difficult for outsiders to understand this. They always wonder why they don't use a bigger cup when drinking water.

The origin of congou tea:

According to textual research, congou tea originated from the tea drinking custom in Song Dynasty. Because the literati pay attention to reason and interest in tea tasting, and pursue spiritual and cultural enjoyment in the process of tea tasting, tea sets are getting smaller and more exquisite.

Exquisite brewing of congou tea;

Kung Fu tea is the most exquisite, exquisite and famous tea ceremony in China, and it is the peak of tea culture.

Kung fu tea pays great attention to the selection of tea, water, tea set, brewing method and taste. Tea should be good in shape, taste and color; Making tea requires clean and sweet water, with mountain springs as the top, river water as the middle and well water as the bottom; The vermilion mud products made in Yixing, Jiangsu Province are the best tea sets. Porcelain cups should be small, white and bright. Tea making pays attention to the technology of "high rushing and low sprinkling, scraping the top, Guan Gong patrolling the city, and Han Xin ordering troops"; Tea tasting not only pays attention to color, fragrance and taste, but also pays attention to "the charm of the bottom of the throat".

The procedure and etiquette of drinking tea are more complicated. For example, after tea is rushed out, the tea maker usually doesn't drink it first, and invites guests or others present to drink it. Generally, the next cup is taken first, and the last person takes the middle cup. Also, if a distinguished guest comes in the process of drinking tea, he has to change the tea and make tea again. The influence of congou tea:

Kung Fu tea is almost an indispensable necessity for every household in Chaoshan. Almost every household has a set of Kung Fu tea set, which can be enjoyed by the whole family in their leisure time. Chaoshan people all over the world have also brought congou to every corner of the world. If you see Kung Fu tea sets in street shops in some big cities in China, you can judge that it must be a shop opened by Chaoshan people, and Chaoshan students often bring tea sets to school when studying in other places.

Kung fu tea is not only very popular in Chaoshan area, but also extends to Zhangzhou and Quanzhou in Fujian and Fengshun, Dabu and Meixian in Meizhou.

Kung fu tea (1)

In Chaoshan food culture, congou tea can keep pace with Chaozhou cuisine. Many foreigners saw Kung Fu tea on the Chaozhou gourmet table. Whether you try it because you don't like it, or sip it slowly with relish, this small fragrant hot tea will always leave a deep impression on you. However, the congou tea at the dinner table did not give you the whole picture of Chaoshan congou tea. Kung fu tea stands out in Chinese tea art because of its exquisite utensils and exquisite brewing procedures, which can fully display the characteristics of oolong tea. Kung fu tea is the favorite drink of Chaoshan people. In Chaoshan, almost every household has a pair of white porcelain underglaze kung fu tea sets: a tea drum, four small crystal porcelain cups, a white porcelain cover or a teapot. In the luxurious living room, exquisite; Next to the lotus jar under the bean shed, there is a small wooden table and several bamboo chair heads, which is even more elegant. Or family members get together at leisure, or guests come to the door, soak in snow flakes and say "tea" politely, and a kind and harmonious feeling will overflow my heart. Kung fu tea is full of the cultural spirit of love and harmony.

How did this custom of congou tea come into being in chaozhou people?

First, the origin of the name of congou tea

The name of kungfu tea appeared in the literature at the latest during the Yongzheng period of the Qing Dynasty. At first, congou tea was a brand of Wuyi Rock Tea, and all well-made rock teas were called congou tea.

In the 12th year of Yongzheng (1734), Lu Tingcan, then the magistrate of Chong 'an County, Fujian Province, quoted Suijianlu as saying in his book:

Wuyi tea is the rock tea in the mountains, and Zhou is the tea by the water. Rock tea is the best, followed by mainland tea Rock tea in Beishan is the best, followed by Nanshan. These two mountains are also named after the rocks they produce, and the best one is called "congou". There are "races" on the works, named after trees, and each plant has only two, which is really rare.

In the eighteenth year of Qianlong (1753), Jing Liu's "A Moment of Leisure Collection" also talked about:

In rock tea, the highest is called old tree race, the second is called race, the second is called race, the second is called flower, and the second is called fragrance. ......

Why is rock tea called "congou tea"? The Book of Tea Continuation quotes Tea Theory written by Wang Caotang in the fifty-sixth year of Kangxi (17 17), and records the making process of Wuyi rock tea in detail, and compares it with the making of green tea:

After picking tea, spread it evenly in a bamboo basket and put it on a windy day. This is called drying tea. Wait until the cyan is gradually put away, then stir-fry and bake. Yangxian (mountain+middle) slices, only steamed and not fried, baked by fire; Luosong Longjing is fried and not baked, so its color is very pure. Only Wuyi is fried and roasted. When it is cooked, it is half green and half red, green fried and red roasted. Spread the tea leaves after picking, and the more fragrant they are, the more fried they are. It's out of date, out of date. Stir-fry and bake, then pick up the branches of the old leaves and make them into a color. Shi Chao's poems "Masifu Lansing" and "Idle Handwritten Pen" are all gone.

Yangxian tablets and Luosong Longjing are both famous brands of green tea. Yangxian tea is produced in Yixing, Jiangsu Province, and the (mountain+middle) tea is Luo (mountain+middle) tea, which is produced in Changxing, Zhejiang Province and belongs to steamed green category. When making, the collected tea leaves are steamed and roasted. Luosong tea is produced in Xiuning, Anhui, and Longjing tea is produced in Hangzhou, Zhejiang, which belongs to the category of fried green. When making, the tea leaves are first fixed in an iron pot, and then repeatedly kneaded and fried. Wuyi rock tea is a kind of semi-fermented tea, and its production process has to go through several processes, such as spreading, baking, frying, baking and picking, among which baking is the most critical process. Spreading green means shaking green, and the dried tea leaves are repeatedly shaken indoors, and the tea leaves are slightly fermented in this process, with red leaves and aroma. At this time, it can be fried in a pot, rubbed while frying, and finally dried in a baking cage, which becomes coarse tea. After selection and baking, it becomes a "cooked tea" that can be sold. It can be seen that Wuyi rock tea has several more processes than green tea. Therefore, Shi Chao described it as "leisure, Aauto Quicker, good times". The name of congou tea is still because of its excellent production. In Volume I of Fujian Production Records written by Guo Baicang in the 12th year of Guangxu (1886), the well-made congou tea is described in more detail:

There is also a name (the name of the grass head), which is Ke Xuan's tender bud, rolled one by one with his fingers in the pot. If the heat is not refined, the color will be deep and the taste will be burnt, which is what the people in the palm of their hands say about congou.

Wuyi Rock Tea has become a famous tea in Ming Dynasty, and it has been exported to Europe since the beginning of17th century, and it is very popular. In the early Qing dynasty, foreign merchants came to purchase rock tea every year, and the demand for rock tea was in short supply. Therefore, tea workers in southern Fujian are made according to the process of rock tea, which is called "Xi tea" internationally. The Anxi Tea Song, written by Ruan (Yue+Wen), a Fujian native who used to be an aide, describes this matter. Chaozhou tea-making imitates rock tea technology, which is probably about this time. Around the Jiaqing period, this semi-fermented tea was collectively called oolong tea in the market, or it was still named as "Kung Fu Famous Species" and followed the old name of Kung Fu Tea.

Since Qianlong Jiaqing in Qing Dynasty, tea men in Fujian, Taiwan Province and eastern Guangdong have explored a kind of tea drinking form which can fully display the characteristics of oolong tea and the rich flavor of hot soup, and is called "gourmet tea". As a result, congou tea gradually evolved from the name of tea to the reference of oolong tea.

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Second, the source of congou tea drinking program

By the Tang Dynasty, drinking tea in China had developed from a physiological need to a cultural enjoyment. Enjoy the spiritual pleasure of drinking tea and pay more attention to the taste of tea. The Book of Tea by Lu Yu of Cha Sheng in the Tang Dynasty systematically summarized the importance attached to the use of tea, the use of utensils and the tea-making procedures in the process of tea tasting. After the Song and Yuan Dynasties, the custom of drinking tea was improved from generation to generation, and the procedure of using tea, utensils and making drinks was bound to change. Especially in the Ming Dynasty, drinking tea in bulk became a fashion. Correspondingly, in terms of use, tea ou was equipped with a cover, which became a cover ou with a lamp, a tray and a cover, and the collocation of teapots and teacups also appeared. As a result, tea tasting programs have a new look compared with Tang and Song Dynasties.

Drinking tea in bulk requires a high temperature of the soup in order to give full play to the taste and fragrance of tea. Tea leaves are covered to help keep warm. Making tea in a teapot is instant drinking. Tea soup is hot and delicious, better than Gaiou. During the Ming and Qing Dynasties, Yixing's purple teapot was the most cherished by tea people. The shape of the pot is exquisite. Feng Kebin, who lived in the Ming and Qing Dynasties, had an interesting discussion on the teapot in Tea Story (Mountain+Interface), saying:

Or should the teapot be big or small? The teapot is small and expensive. Each guest, a pot, let yourself drink, just for fun. What is this? The pot is small, the fragrance does not come loose, and the taste does not last.

Small teapots are easy to retain fragrance and flavor because they are easy to keep warm. Feng Kebin seems to pay more attention to the enjoyment of tea people during drinking, that is, the enjoyment of culture. In fact, in the middle and late Ming dynasty, enjoying the spiritual pleasure of tea tasting has become the common pursuit of tea people with the background of literati. The idea of making a small pot can be read in many tea books at that time. For example, Zhou's "Cultivation of Immortal Tea (Caotouming Tea) Pot System" with Yixing Zisha Pot as the theme emphasizes:

The name (grass head name) pot should be small but not big, shallow but not deep, the lid should be long and not ground, and the Tang Li name (grass head name) is fragrant, so that it can be United and dense.

As the saying goes, "eat less and learn more", don't have too much tea soup, the pot should be small, and the teacups tend to be miniaturized. During the Wanli period of the Ming Dynasty, Luo Yu wrote "Tea Solution" and discussed the utensils for drinking tea. He said, "Small is better than ancient".

In short, in the middle and late Ming Dynasty, the need to drink loose tea and the purpose of drinking tea were to pursue "fun" in the process of taste. These two reasons have led to the emergence of the "small pot and small cup" ready-to-drink plan. This program was originally applied to the tasting of loose tea and green tea, but as Feng Kebin said in the Book of Tea, "it doesn't have to be applied to other teas". Oolong tea usually has to wait until the tender leaves at the top of the new buds have opened, and two or three leaves at the top are picked together. Tea leaves are coarse and old, and the requirements for water temperature are high when brewing, so the scheme of using small pots and cups is more suitable.

During the Qianlong period, the process of brewing Wuyi tea in small pots and cups prevailed in northern and southern Fujian. The drinking method of congou tea has actually appeared, but "congou tea" is not used as the name of this drinking program. In the twenty-seventh year of Qianlong (1762), this drinking procedure was recorded for the first time in "Longxi County Records" in Zhangzhou, Fujian Province. Article 10 of the book "Customs" said:

Tea in Lingshan Temple is vulgar and expensive. Buy Wuyi tea recently and make tea in May. You must use Dabin's pot, Ruoshen's cup, big and strong stove, Xi's fan and bamboo basket. Any cooking name (grass head name) should be based on water, supplemented by fire. Sancha River is the top water, followed by Huimin Spring, Longyao Shiquan and Yuquan. In the hinterland, there are many people who indulge in it, and the cost of tea is thousands of years old.

Longxi is a county under the jurisdiction of Zhangzhou, which is here. In the late Ming and early Qing dynasties, most Wuyi tea workers were from Zhangzhou, and the rise of this tea custom was related to this. This short section of county annals not only records tea sets, but also discusses the use of water, which is a concise congou. At that time, I didn't know if this tea tasting program was called congou. Twenty years later, Yuan Mei described his experience of drinking Wuyi tea in Bingwu, Gan Long (fifty-one years, 1786) in the article "Wuyi tea" in Suiyuan Food List:

I don't like Wuyi tea. I think it is as bitter as drinking medicine. However, in the afternoon and autumn, I went to Man Ting Peak and Tianyou Temple in Wuyishan, where monks and Taoists competed for tea. The cup is as small as a walnut and the pot as small as a citron. Every time I pour it, there is not one or two. You can't bear to swallow your mouth. Smell it first, and then taste it. Chew slowly, considerate, really fragrant, sweet tongue. After one drink, try one or two more, which is soothing and enjoyable.

Brew Wuyi rock tea in a small pot and cup, smell it, swallow it carefully and chew it slowly. No matter the sand-mud stove, active charcoal and pine wind crab eyes, they all taste the same as congou, but Yuan Mei never mentioned the name "congou". More interestingly, after Yuan Zicai tasted a small cup of Wuyi tea, he no longer "suspected that it was as bitter as drinking medicine", but "began to feel that Longjing was clear and sparse, enviable but good, but poor in rhyme".

Kung Fu Tea (3)

At the turn of Qianlong and Jiaqing, the above-mentioned tea tasting methods were popular in eastern Guangdong, and "congou" was also borrowed from the name of tea and became the name of this tea drinking program. The first document that named "Kung Fu Tea" as the title of tea tasting program was Yu Jiao's Miscellaneous Notes of DreamWorks. Tides, beauty and the moon. Yu Jiao, a native of Yinshan, Zhejiang Province, served as the classics of Xingning, Guangdong Province from 58 years of Qianlong to 5 years of Jiaqing (1793- 1800), which is recorded in Jia Chao Yue Feng for a period of time. Shi Yu said:

The cooking method of congou tea is based on Lu Yu's Tea Classic, and the utensils are more exquisite. The stove is shaped like a truncated tube, about one foot two or three inches high and made of fine white mud. The best pot is made in Yixing kiln, with a round body, a flat belly and a crooked turn, and the largest pot can receive half a liter. Most of the cups and plates are painted porcelain, and the landscape figures are written inside and outside, which is extremely exquisite and non-modern. But without knowledge, it is impossible to verify when it was done. There is a stove, a pot and a plate, but the number of cups is the same as the number of visitors. The cup is so small that it looks like a full moon. In addition, there are tiles, brown mats, paper fans and bamboo clips, all of which are simple and elegant. Pots, plates and cups, the old and the best, are as expensive as archways. It is not easy to get it on an ordinary ship. First store the spring water in a pot, boil it with fine charcoal until it boils, pour Fujian tea into the pot, cover it and pour it again, then pour it out carefully. The smell is fragrant and strong, and it is better than chewing plum blossoms. ..... Shucha didn't last long. Today Wuyi is the only one on board, and the best one is two white cymbals per catty.

This passage describes in detail the custom of drinking tea on the Liujiang boat in the Han River at that time. Tea-making utensils used by Liu Peng on board include clay stoves, clay pots, Yixing teapot, small flower porcelain cups and tea trays, as well as tea mats, paper fans and charcoal-burning bamboo clips. This tea set is quite complete. Fujian tea, especially Wuyi tea, the procedures of pouring tea, brewing, pouring cans, screening tea and tasting tea are the same as today. As a drinking program, congou tea has existed in name only by this time.

However, congou was not only popular in Chaozhou at that time. The owners of the Liupeng boat recorded in Jia Chao Yue Feng are some from Meizhou, some from Xingning, and not all of them are hipsters. After Daoguang, the kungfu tea custom in southern Fujian is still very popular. In the 12th year of Daoguang (1832), the revision of Xiamen Records, Volume 15, Records of Customs:

Drinking tea is very common. If the vessel is small, the pot is called Meng Gong pot, and if the cup is deep, it is called cup. Tea is twice as heavy and four or five times more expensive. Fry it lightly, like sipping wine. When paying a guest, the guest will recognize its fragrance and sip it carefully. If not, they will laugh at each other. It is called congou tea, or the mistake of Mojun tea. He boasted about it, so he had a tea fight. Drug addicts can't help themselves. Some scholars study at the end of the year, and their income is not enough to pay for tea. It's boring to try. Although it doesn't hurt, why not put up with useful time and abandon it to useless tea?

Shihongbao's Fujian Miscellanies also said:

Zhang Quan belongs to every genus, and the custom is still kungfu tea. The tea set is exquisite, the pot is as small as a walnut, called Meng Gong pot, and the small cup is called deep cup. Tea is valued by Wuyi race, and there are also one or two for a few dollars. Sip carefully for half a day, or you will laugh at each other. Give it to your friend Huang Yu, saying that the water at home is cold, and drinking too much hurts people. Therefore, it is still this kind of tea, because it is easy to quench your thirst if you drink less.

There are many things between salt in Fujian Miscellanies, which should be mentioned in this article at this time. In fact, until today, many people in southern Fujian are still addicted to congou.

Moreover, hipsters don't always use the drinking program of congou tea.

Third, the history of hipsters drinking tea

The history of hipsters drinking tea can only be found in the literature now.

Before the Song Dynasty, Chaozhou literature was lacking, and whether the hipsters drank tea was at a loss. Tea drinking was very popular in Song Dynasty. With the rise of tea houses and many Fujian people going to Chaozhou as officials, tea drinking easily spread to Chaozhou.

At the southern foot of the Jinshan Mountain in Chaozhou, there is a cliff stone carving in the Song Dynasty, engraved with the poem "jincheng mountain" written by William Wang, the ruler of the Northern Song Dynasty (10/2), which contains the words "the tea stove is fragrant and the niche is flat". Tea stove is used to boil water when making tea, which is the earliest record of Chaozhou tea affair that can be seen now. From the third year to the seventh year of Yuanfeng (1080- 1084), Su Dongpo was in Huangzhou, and his good friend and Chaozhou celebrity Wu Fugu sent him tea. Dongpo thanked Wu for his book Answering Wu and said, "There are several names for sending Hui Jian (the name of Cao Tou), all of which are excellent. It's a pity that tea is rare in his own land. " The tea made in Wufugu Valley is excellent, which shows that some Chaozhou scribes can taste tea. "Tea from other places is hard to find" because Chaozhou did not produce tea at that time, "there were no tea pickers and tea merchants" (Yongle Dadian, volume 5343, Chaozhou House Taxes, quoted from Sanyo Tuzhi). Therefore, the tea-drinking culture at that time, I am afraid, can only be circulated among Chaozhou scribes, and it is difficult to affect ordinary people.

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Fourth, the reason why Kung Fu tea is famous.

Brewing oolong tea in small pots and cups is a popular tea drinking custom in Fujian, Taiwan Province and Chaoshan. However, many tea drinkers are used to calling this tea tasting method "Chaoshan congou". Many works on tea culture have talked about congou, and Chaoshan congou is often cited as an example. Why is the tea tasting custom in Chaoshan area regarded as the representative of the art of congou tea tasting, but it has emerged in the forest of Chinese tea art? There are two main reasons: one is the promotion of commerce, and the other is the polishing of literati.

After Qianlong Jiaqing in Qing Dynasty, the commerce in Chaoshan was very developed. The Chaozhou dialect described in Yu Jiao's "Jia Chao Yue Feng" at the turn of Ganjia is rich in exotic products and business travel, and it is "a city of its own". The introduction of Kung Fu tea art into Chaozhou has a lot to do with this prosperous business activity. In the 13th year of Jiaqing (1808), there is such a record in "Chongan County Records" Volume 1 "Customs":

Zhu Xing is the most prosperous tea market. After the early spring, the basket is filled with mountains and the burden is the road. There are many traffickers in Jiangxi, Tingzhou, Xing, Quan and other places, but not all the traders in Gusu, Xiamen and eastern Guangdong are indigenous.

Chong 'an is the producing area of Wuyi rock tea, and East Guangdong should refer to the three states of Chaomei Xundong (including Shantou, Chaozhou, Jieyang, Meizhou and Shanwei today). According to this record, at the beginning of Jiaqing, there were already merchants from eastern Guangdong trading tea. However, according to Jia Chao Yue Feng, Wuyi tea is very popular on Liu Peng's boat, so the formation of the custom of Kung Fu tea in eastern Guangdong must be related to this trade. The records of these two books can confirm each other. By the Ming Dynasty, things seemed very different. Li Jing Ji, published in the 45th year of Jiajing in Ming Dynasty (1566), Litchi Ji, published in the 9th year of Wanli (158 1), and Su six niang, inscribed by Golden Flower Girl, which is also said to be published in Wanli, are all local Chaozhou stories. There are many plots in the opera, all of which are about tea affairs in chaozhou people at that time. Please look at the following example.

"Li Jing Ji" 22 "I am lazy to dress", Yichun has a super lyric:

Eighteen years ago, in a deep room, you held a pot of water and tea soup.

These two paragraphs show that tea has become an essential drink in Chaozhou since the middle of the Ming Dynasty.

It also formed the custom of entertaining guests with tea, such as the section "six niang gets married" in Su six niang, and the lyrics to his daughter:

You have to be careful with your oil, salt, sauce and vinegar. People come and go for betel nut tea.

Betel nut is a gift fruit for guests. In the early Qing Dynasty, Qu Dajun's Guangdong New Language said: "Cantonese people are the most concerned about betel nuts. As a gift fruit, customers must go first. " Betel nut is compared with tea in the lyrics, which shows that tea is also used to respect guests. As the saying goes, "the door is the guest." No matter what the other person's status is, as long as he enters the house, he will be served tea and poured water. "Litchi" back to the eighth, write Li to the Huang family as a matchmaker, and Huang Fu let her home reception:

(Gong Bai) It turned out to be a media aunt, and the old man lost contact. Xiaoqi, sit in the chair and count the tea and food.

There is a similar plot in Su six niang. Mrs. Lin went to Sue's house as a matchmaker. When Ma Su saw it, she hurriedly call way:

(Finally) It turned out to be Mrs. Lin. Please sit down and ask for a cup of tea.

This is a tea invitation from the matchmaker. Li Jing Ji (No.1 19) and Broken Treasure Mirror wrote that Chen San gave Wu Nianjia a mirror, and Yichun invited him to tea:

Guest, please have tea.

Who told you to bring this tea?

LitchiNo. 17, this plot is more specific:

(Chunbai) Master, master is waiting for tea.

(Bai Sheng) Little sister, Mrs. Ruan Gong, do you have any tea?

(Chunbai) Ruan only meets distinguished guests, with tea and vegetables.

This is for craftsmen to drink tea. It can be seen that the folk tea affair in Chaozhou was very popular at that time.

However, the tea drinking and brew tea style of the hipsters in Ming Dynasty were not very particular. In the seventh year of orthodoxy (1422), the poem "Zhiping Temple" by Zhou Tai, a Chaoyang sect, said, "Monks cook grass heads and burn red leaves, while tourists sweep moss with poems", so we talked about burning tea leaves. If "burning red leaves" is a rhetorical word opposite to "sweeping moss", it is not necessarily realistic. Then the poem "Sweeping leaves and sitting before and after making tea, singing alone at night and illuminating the moon" written by Lin Darong around the twentieth year of Jiajing (154 1) truly reflects the kind of wildness pursued by Ming literati when drinking tea.

There are wild interests, but the cooking method is really not done yet.

In the early Qing Dynasty, it seemed that congou tea was not popular in Chaozhou. Ten years after Qianlong (1745), Volume 10 of the Annals of Puning County and the Annals of Arts and Literature contains Xiao Linzhi's "On Flowers and Cigarettes", the editor-in-chief and county magistrate, in which there is a description of how to enjoy tea and spend cigarettes:

Because the tea set is set in spring and cooked by running water, the wind is clear, the crab's eyes are spinning, and the buds are taken and floating in a blue bowl. The taste is sweet, but the coolness is better.

Xiaoxian ordered tea tasting, and tea was envied by others. Although it is also very particular, it is not congou. Judging from the Yue Feng in Jia Chao cited above, it was not until the turn of Qianlong and Jiaqing that the drinking procedure of congou tea appeared in Chaozhou dialect. Not long before the 10th year of Guangxu (1884), Zhang Xintai came to Guangdong from Jiangdu. He wrote:

Chaoshun Shang You congou tea is famous for its big roast, small roast, small variety, famous variety, exotic variety and oolong, and almost all of them are both. Chen Ding made Yixing pot as big as walnut. If the cup is deep, the soup is fried with elemene charcoal. It looks like a crab's eye when cooked, so it's named after it (the name of grass head), which is especially delicious. Cool bankrupt.

Therefore, drinking congou in Guangxu has become a habit in Chaoshan.

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Since this period, Chaoshan folk overseas trade has become increasingly active. After Shantou opened its port, tea became one of the main trade items. From the 11th year to the 15th year of Guangxu (1885- 1890), Shantou Customs exported nearly 65,438+1100,000 simadan of tea every year, which was the most valuable goods sold abroad. Except for a small part of Chaoshan tea, most of these teas were purchased by businessmen from Wuyi and Anxi. In the late Qing Dynasty, the merchants who managed the tea industry and owned tea gardens and tea shops in Wuyi were Li Hushan in Shantou and Yang in Chaozhou. Until War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression, there were still many Chapman who operated tea industry in Fujian and Taiwan Province provinces. Lian Heng's General History of Taiwan Province Province said:

Oolong tea is a unique flavor in Taipei, and it is also sold in the United States, and the market is getting wider and wider. From the beginning, the tea industry has flourished, and it can be worth two million to several hundred thousand a year. Businessmen in Xiamen and Shantou opened twenty or thirty tea shops, and many tea workers came from Anxi and returned to Zhixia in the spring.

In the eighteenth year of the Republic of China (1929), the article "Oolong Tea" in Volume 25 of Jian 'ou County Records was also recorded:

In recent years, there have been dozens of buyers of Guangchao Gang. The market is located in the urban area, with Dongfeng Tun in the east and Nanyakou in the south. The output is several times that of daffodils, and it is counted in tens of thousands of cases every year (there are two cases, one is a vat, the other is 25 cases, and the other is 30 kilograms, twice as much as the vat).

Most of the tea purchased by Chaozhou merchants are sold overseas in Hong Kong, and some of them are sold locally in Chaoshan. According to some statistics, before liberation, Jieyang County sold an average of more than 10,000 kilograms of tea per month, basically building tea. The business activities of tea merchants undoubtedly promoted the popularization of congou and the formation of congou custom in Chaoshan.

From Ganjia, Chaoshan people began to do business, and Chaoshan people's footprints were found in all major docks at home and abroad. Shops run by Chaoshan people generally have congou tea to entertain guests, so as to expand their popularity. How many tourists come from the south to the north, so they have seen congou. Mr. Liang Shiqiu wrote in the article Recalling Mr. Huang, a famous scholar in Chaoshan:

Our friends in Qingdao are called the Eight Immortals in Wine, and Mr. Wang is one of them. Carving an altar with 30 Jin of flowers will be spent overnight, which often keeps people busy. Follow your husband to the Chaozhou gang's trade line he is familiar with, row in, go straight to the back hall, sit on the lounge chair, smoke cigarettes, serve tea, small pots and small lamps, real congou.

Mr. Liang almost got the impression that:

Some people in Chaoshan area don't pay attention to drinking tea. What we enjoy is at least "Dahongpao" and "Narcissus".

The commercial activities of Chaozhou merchants spread Kung Fu tea art to a wider area. Therefore, the tea tasting custom in Chaoshan area is regarded as the representative of the art of congou tea tasting.

Generally speaking, the artistry of daily life behavior will inevitably go through a process of summing up and polishing. Starting from Lu Yu's The Classic of Tea, literati and poets in past dynasties left a large number of tea books, texts and poems, which made later generations understand the glory of Chinese tea art and the essence of China tea ceremony. The tea tasting custom in Chaoshan area is considered as the representative of the art of congou tea tasting, and the polishing of intellectuals is also a very important reason.

As mentioned earlier, after the tea custom of brewing oolong tea in small pots and cups was formed, many local chronicles and literati notes described and summarized it and called it "congou tea". Probably due to the limitation of writing style, these descriptions and summaries are very brief and unsystematic.

Chaozhou scholar Weng Huidong first systematically summarized and refined the custom of congou tea. He has a mimeographed copy of Chaozhou Tea Classic-Kung Fu Tea. According to the author's preface, the writing time is 1957. The author systematically describes the procedures of using tea, taking water, lighting, tea set and cooking of Chaoshan congou. The basic content is as follows: 1. With tea, "trendy people like it, but Wuyi and Anxi are in the producing area, and Qige and Tieguanyin are in the variety." 2. To get water, "the landscape is one, the river is the middle, and the well is under it". As for the water used for making tea, we only follow the tea classics. 3. Palm fire, tea books in Ming Dynasty have been said to be "living fire", and hipsters pay more attention to choosing charcoal fire when cooking tea. 4. List the tea sets commonly used by hipsters, and introduce the teapot, lid and teacup in detail. Others, such as washing tea, tea tray, tea mat, water bottle, water bowl, dragon jar, sand shovel, feather fan, etc., also describe their shapes and usage. 5. Weng thought that "the job of congou is cooking", so he described the cooking procedure of congou in detail, including dividing device, taking tea, waiting for soup, making points, scraping foam, pouring cans, scalding cups and sprinkling tea. This paper summarizes the most basic characteristics of Kung Fu tea custom.

In the following 40 years, many works introducing Kung Fu tea appeared. Wu Yu's Talk about Chaoshan Gongfu Tea was published in Hong Kong's Wen Wei Po, and's Gongfu Tea was published in Singapore, making Chaoshan Gongfu Tea famous overseas. Zhang Huayun's "The Road of Chaoshan Kungfu Tea" and Chenxiang Bai's "Chaoshan Kungfu Tea and Confucianism" focus on exploring the cultural spirit of Kungfu tea. Zeng Chun 'an's Humble Opinion on Chaoshan Gongfu Tea and Huang Guangwu's Gongfu Tea and the Road to Gongfu Tea pay more attention to the discussion of the history of Chaoshan Gongfu Tea.

For decades, the custom of Chaoshan congou tea has changed a lot, from utensils to cooking procedures, it is no longer the same. The summary and polishing of literati can't standardize and perfect this kind of life custom. However, these summaries and embellishments have made the Chaoshan tea custom famous far and wide, so that when it comes to congou, we always take the Chaoshan tea custom as an example, and talk about the jars in Chen Meng, such as the god gull, "Guan Gong's tour of the city" and "Han Xin's soldiers".

First, the promotion of commerce, and then the polishing of literati, "Chaoshan congou" finally became a representative of the tea tasting custom of brewing oolong tea in small pots and cups, which was popular in southern Fujian and eastern Guangdong.