Tea smashing originated in the Han Dynasty, flourished in the Ming and Qing Dynasties, and spread in Anhua area north of central Hunan. Its color, taste, efficacy, production method and tea drinking custom all make passers-by feel the quaint and rich tea culture in mountainous areas. In April in bloom, the reporter of China News Service followed the interview group of "Around Dongting Lake" and walked into this place where tea was overflowing.
Anhua County is more than 200 kilometers away from Changsha, the provincial capital. It is a county-level city where 26 ethnic groups such as Han, Tujia, Miao and Mongolian live together. Leicha with unique flavor is a famous product in Anhua mountain area, which can be called a local must. From 65438 to 0985, Japanese friends made a special trip here to inspect the origin and production technology of tea seeds, and brought them back to Japan for wide dissemination.
"The materials used for making tea are very particular. When farmers make tea, they all choose their own excellent tea leaves and add Chinese herbal medicines such as rice, beans, peanuts, sesame seeds, licorice, chrysanthemum and mugwort leaves. Put it into a ceramic tile bowl (also called a rolling pin) according to a certain proportion, make a round-headed wooden stick (also called a rolling pin) with tea branches, add a little water and grind it into mud, and pour it into a tea bowl for later use. " In the home of Master Yu, a famous local tea smashing master, the reporter saw the simplest and purest tea smashing process.
"This is the most' genuine' pollution-free green drink." Soon, Master Yu brought you a bowl of fragrant farm tea with boiling water, and told reporters that the raw materials of tea are all their own agricultural products, and the production process is purely manual to ensure the original flavor. After eating a bowl, I feel sweet and moist in my mouth, with endless aftertaste, and the fatigue of traveling has disappeared.
In Anhua, most rural farmers make tea and drink tea, which is related to the treatment of traditional Chinese medicine in China. In the folk, smashing tea is called "medicinal tea". In addition, Anhua area is located in a remote mountainous area and used to be a poor place. People look down on the disease, so they take some symptomatic herbs to drink-making tea to quench their thirst and cure diseases, and it costs nothing. So until now, people still use it to prevent diseases. Many old people seldom get sick when they are 80 or 90 years old, because they drink this kind of tea since childhood. The life expectancy of the elderly in Anhua rural areas is higher than that in other places, which cannot be said to be related to long-term tea drinking.
There are many varieties in anhua tea. Geographically, there are nearly ten categories such as Meicheng tea, Dafu tea and Houxiang tea. According to the season, each season and month are almost different; According to its functions, it has the functions of quenching thirst, diminishing inflammation, heatstroke prevention, keeping out cold, eliminating hunger and reducing appetite ... With the progress of the times, there have also been various bagged teas and iced teas that are cooled by refrigerators.
In recent years, Anhua fried tea began to go out of the farm and go to the market. Not only are tea stalls for making tea spread all over urban and rural areas, but some tourist attractions simply develop tea as an entertainment project, attracting many overseas tourists from Singapore and Japan to visit. The most striking thing is that the emerging tea smashing workshops combine the original tea smashing technology with modern production methods, so that more people can taste this pure natural green drink.