Nong Tianyi said that Lu Yao tea is more fragrant.

At this time, Nonglu mentioned his grandfather's "Sanjitang" "Merchant Legacy", combined with his father's experience of the Wanli Tea Road, he said that at that time, there were detailed records of the purchase of tea in the south and the sale of tea in the north, and these rules must be observed, including the preparation for entering the mountainous area of Jingshan Xiazhou to purchase tea, the standard for distinguishing the quality of tea varieties and tea grades, the technology of processing various types of tea, the tax ratio for transporting tea through various checkpoints, and the freight of transporting tea by car, boat, mule and camel. There are even regulations on whether the cost of the food and beverages used by each tea shop is provided "in the bank" or provided by itself.

Nonglu said that when they arrived in Zhangjiakou, the tea merchants either sold the tea leaves or changed the packaging and means of transportation, and continued north to Kyakhta. The journey from Zhangjiakou to Kyakhta is about 2,150 kilometers, of which more than 400 kilometers are the vast Gobi Desert. It is not uncommon to see people for a few days."

Nong Tianyi sighed, it's really not easy!

According to the record of "Mongolian Jian": "From Zhangjiakou to the northwest beyond the Yin Mountain to the desert, through Chahar's Chahanbar, Hasungur, Meizhang Wusu and other places can reach Kyakhta and the trading city, Shanxi tea merchants transport tea more than this road." After there was a cold and heat table, an official wrote down the exact temperature of -36 °C in the severe cold of winter, and recorded the freezing of people and animals, saying: "In this issue of Jingxin, I was five days late, and I inquired about the postman, and I froze to death on the way...... There were many camels and horses along the way, and there were many people who froze. ”

At that time, Nonglu set up a transit station between many counties, and the transportation horses of tea, salt, and Chinese medicinal materials had to stay here overnight, and some warehouses also had transit warehouses here. Behind the village, there is the mysterious and beautiful "Chuanyan River", and the ancient tea horse roads follow the mountains along this river.

Longyan Village in Qinglian Ancient Town, Nanyi County, on the ancient road, backed by Yunwu Mountain and facing the Fujiang River, is the source of the ancient tea horse road in the depths of Jingshan Mountain. The first tea-transporting mule and horse gang in Nanyi County was born here. The leader of the Mule and Horse Gang is a descendant of the surname Yang.

During the Ming and Qing dynasties, there were more than 20,000 tea practitioners and more than 30 tea numbers. "The tea market is the most, and the people on both sides of the strait are dense" is a true portrayal of the prosperity of the tea industry on both sides of the Fujiang River at that time. At that time, 70% of China's tea was produced in the ancient tea town of Xiajiang. The caravan on this ancient road still exists to this day and is known as the "last caravan".

Previously, Qinglian Town mainly produced yellow tea, and in the early years of the Republic of China, tea processing was mainly black tea and green tea. In its heyday, the Qing Dynasty sent troops to protect tea merchants. During the Republican period, the tea industry was still thriving. At this time, there were dozens of ship wharves along the Fujiang River less than 1.5 kilometers, of which six or seven were mainly used to transport tea, including Sanjitang Wharf and Sande Wharf...... Workers specializing in porters set up foot gangs, helping 120 people, and living from this all year round.

And in this process, many people also started by making tea and selling tea with a small profit, and became big bosses. Many outsiders have been here for a long time to take root, open shops, and operate tea...... It has achieved the prosperity of the ancient city in the past.

Knowing the fragrance: the summer heat, the scorching sun on the head, the scorching sand on the feet, the water source is not seen for several days, such as frying and burning; In winter, the desert plateau, the wind is howling, and the cold is biting; In spring and autumn, there are winds and sand from time to time, the world is obscure, and the road is filled and people are buried. From time to time, it is heard of riding bandits, killing people and plundering goods, and dying in natural and man-made disasters. The yellow sand buries the white bones, and the wind and snow wrap the frozen spirit. The journey is hard to describe in words.

Xu Zhinan once said that reaching Kyakhta was the end point of the initial Kyakhta trade. "Kyakhta" means "place with tea" in Chinese. In 1727, China and Russia signed the famous Treaty of Kyakhta, which divided Kyakhta into two, with the old city assigned to Russia and the new city to China. The Qing Dynasty built a new street in Kyakhta, called the "City of Trading". But it didn't take long for the Mongolian merchants to cross the border to do business in Russia.

Qin Yuhe talked about the specific foreign trade business, after arriving in Kyakhta, the tea merchants and Russian businessmen exchanged mainly furs, "he comes with skin, I go with tea." This kind of tea transported by land "due to the wind and frost experienced by land, so its tea taste is not good, not like the sea ship passing through the hot summer of the South Seas, resulting in the taste of tea is also reduced."

By the middle of the 18th century, tea had become an indispensable necessity in the lives of the Mongolian and Russian ethnic groups, who were mainly carnivorous, and had developed to the extent that "it is better to go without food for a day than without tea for a day".

As for how the Russians and Mongolians love tea, some historians in Russia have long made a statement: "Both rich and poor, young and old, are fond of drinking brick tea, bread and tea as breakfast in the morning, do not go to work if they do not drink tea, and must have tea after lunch, and drink tea up to five times a day."

After entering the 19th century, Kyakhta's tea trade continued to grow, quickly overtaking cotton and silk to firmly occupy the first place, and tea also extended from Kyakhta north to west to Europe. In 1820, Speransky, the Russian governor of Siberia, bluntly stated: "The silk fabric is over, the cotton cloth is almost over, and all that remains is tea, tea, and tea." ”

In the seventh year of Guangxu of the Qing Dynasty (1881), a journalist named George Kennan said: "Almost all the famous tea consumed in Russia was brought by camel caravans from northern China through Mongolia...... The tea leaves enter Russia from Kyakhta, where they are repackaged, fur-wrapped, sewn with thread and traversed some 4,000 miles across Siberia to St. Petersburg, Moscow, or Nizhny Novgorod's annual trade fair. ”

In 1905, the Trans-Russian Trans-Siberian Railway was completed and opened to traffic. Since then, Russian businessmen have re-exported goods from Tianjin to Kyakhta by land to return to China, and have been transferred to northern Shanghai and transferred to railways to return to China. In addition, Indian tea and Ceylon tea have entered the international market, gradually breaking the situation of Chinese tea monopolizing the world tea market.

As a result, at the starting point of the tea road, the benefits of tea collection were almost exhausted, the means of transportation were backward, the taxes were numerous, and the cost could not be reduced.

In the first year of the Qing Dynasty's proclamation of unification (1909), Russia suddenly imposed heavy taxes on Chinese merchants in Russia, and the amount of taxes levied was several times higher than the price of goods, so as to drive away and suffocate Chinese merchants. In 1914, the First World War broke out, and the Russian Civil War broke out, and the losses of tea merchants were incalculable. The tea road, which had flourished on the Eurasian continent for 200 years, has completely disappeared.

Due to the special importance of tea in the daily life of the brothers of the border ethnic groups, tea has also become an important means for the feudal dynasties and the upper-class rulers of ethnic minorities to implement the policy of "governing the border with tea". In the tenth year of Yongzheng Dynasty (1732), the governor of Yunnan and Guizhou, Ortai, controlled the number of war horses in the Yunnan border region and the border countries with the tea and horse market, and finally successfully quelled the rebellion and smoothly implemented the land reform and return to the stream.

Ethnic minorities in the border areas take animal husbandry as their industry, meat and milk as the top, and tea "attacks the greasy flesh of meat and cleanses the sleepiness of the whole night". In the Song Dynasty, it was very common for herdsmen to drink tea, and it was already "Yi people can not live without tea for a day", from the nobles to the common people, all of whom did not drink. As early as the Wanli period of the Ming Dynasty, tea was sold to Qinghai, Xinjiang, Inner Mongolia and other provinces and regions as border tea, aiming to stabilize the frontier and promote ethnic unity.

In the border areas, there is a popular saying among the people: "If you drink wine, you will drink Elite, and if you drink tea, you will drink Yihong tea." It is a true portrayal of those years. However, most of them are limited to "essential raw materials for making milk tea".

In the hands of Nong Tianyi, the processing technology of "Yi Black Tea" at this time has become increasingly mature and has reached its peak, and the "sealed tea" with exquisite packaging and compact shape has appeared. "Sealed tea" is tightly formed in a special mold, the brick has a turtle back, the outer seal is specially made of leather paper, the brick ridge is covered with a special seal of the dragon-shaped logo, and the brick surface has the name of the manufacturer (tea number), and the specifications and weight are the same. "Feng Tea" is the main "official tea", and the raw materials of Mao tea are mainly supplied by Nanyi County and supervised by the local governor.

Therefore, especially the high-quality sealed tea, it is rare for ordinary herdsmen to see it in a year. In the years when tea production was not in place during the Republic of China, a tea brick weighing 2 kg could even be exchanged for 7 sheep. During the Anti-Japanese War, the tea transportation route was interrupted, and the people in the border areas replaced the tea with fried wheat and tartary buckwheat, which had no effect, and there were many people who were sick with tea.

At this time, it was mainly marketed in the form of brick tea throughout the frontier, and the frontier people usually boiled brick tea in mare's milk, milk and other milks to serve as tea. It is reported that by the end of the Qing Dynasty and the beginning of the Republic of China, during the Anti-Japanese War, 100% of the ethnic minorities in Northwest China drank brick tea.

In the long river of history, from the discovery of tea in Shennong, the cultivation of tea, and then into a drink, the shipping of horses, the desert Gobi, Jingshan tea as the "mysterious drink" on the ancient Silk Road, the "drink of life" in the eyes of the compatriots in the northwest frontier, the historical value is very high.

Today, the well-known Ancient Tea Horse Road has long been submerged in the smoke and clouds of history, and the sound of horses' hooves on the ancient road has gradually fallen silent with the precipitation of history. However, the Ancient Tea Horse Road, as a road carrying the humanistic spirit, has finally been remembered by history:

Generations of tea merchants, horsemen, are not only businessmen who trade and do business, but also explorers who open up the ancient tea horse road;

The Ancient Tea Horse Road is not only a transportation channel, but also a link between the inland and the border stopper, China and the world.

The ancient road, the west wind, the thin horse, the tea merchants, and the Jingshan tea have all created this magical tea culture that has been passed down to this day, and continue to nourish this ancient and mysterious land.