"I have been an ink artist all my life, and I have been a tea fairy for several lifetimes."

Chudi has been tea since ancient times. In 1861, Hankou opened its port, and the tea of Kyushu gathered, Russian businessmen gathered, and tea factories were numerous.

Strange green bricks, well-known at home and abroad, so won the reputation of China's brick tea capital, Oriental tea port.

Nonglu said to Qin Yuhe that tea exports are increasing year by year, up to more than ninety percent of the country, and our tea shop must seize the market and launch green brick tea as soon as possible.

Qin Yuhe said, yes, in my opinion, it is appropriate to use high-altitude Jingshan and Shennongjia tea as raw materials to be processed into green brick tea in Hankou.

Nonglu said, I have this intention, so I will do it immediately.

Qin Yuhe said okay.

The Sino-Russian Tea Ceremony, starting from Hankou, goes north by the Han River, crosses Henan, enters Shanxi, crosses the desert, and reaches Kyakhta on the Sino-Russian border, and then Moscow and St. Petersburg, connecting Asia and Europe, which is comparable to the Silk Road.

"Sanjitang Tea Shop" launched green brick tea, which is collected from the fresh leaves of the high mountain tea forests above 1,000 meters above sea level in Jingshan and Shennongjia, the birthplace of tea in the world, and refined with ancient secret techniques. Its color is black and oily, the soup is mellow and not astringent, fragrant and deep, and the sweet and mellow is long. It has the effects of lowering lipids, lowering blood sugar and blood pressure, eliminating food and relieving greasy, and softening blood vessels.

According to records, Emperor Qianlong was fond of green brick tea in Chudi, and once joked: "The country can be without a king for a day, and the king cannot be without tea for a day."

In the mid-19th and early 20th centuries, brick tea from Hankow was very popular in Russia.

At this time, from Hankou to Kyakhta, due to the contact between tea trade, tea merchants from Kyakhta flocked to Hankou to set up factories and engage in tea processing, transportation and trade.

The farm house mainly uses iron box tea and sells it to Kyakhta. At this time, the tea marketed started from Hankou, along the Yangtze River waterway, passed through Wusongkou in Shanghai, took the sea route to Tianjin, to Zhangjiakou, crossed Mongolia to Kyakhta, and then crossed Siberia to the European part of Russia, including cities such as Moscow and St. Petersburg.

At this time, the Russian brick tea factory had famous brands of Russian businessmen in Hankou such as "Xintai" and "Fuchang".

In accordance with the consumption habits of the Russians, Nonglu takes "Sanjitang" as the brand, and its green brick tea is refined as: tea weight 1500g, length 297mm, width 210mm, thickness 20mm, tea screen is finely carved with mahogany, simple and heavy, and has great collection value. Therefore, it is purchased or collected in large quantities by Russian customers.

Hankou is the center of the national tea city and the three major tea export ports in the country, and the tea market on Hanzheng Street is unprecedentedly prosperous, so much so that there is a saying that "tea does not pass through Hankou, it is not fragrant".

According to records, for more than 60 years since 1860, the tea trade in Hankou accounted for more than 90% of the entire Sino-British trade, and from 1871 to 1890, Hankou exported an average of 2 million quintals of tea per year. During this period, Chinese tea almost monopolized the world tea market, and Hankow's tea exports accounted for as much as 60% of the total domestic tea exports.

This is a saying in the mouth of foreign businessmen, "the world's tea mainly depends on China, and China's tea mainly depends on Hankou". At the same time, "the world knows China's Great Hankou because of tea".

Looking back at the history of tea export, we can extract a few classic fragments here:

In the 60s of the 17th century, a pound of Chinese black tea sold for £6-10 in London, while an English valet was paid only £2-6 a year.

At the end of the 17th century, the price of tea in London had fallen, but it was still sold for as little as 16 shillings per pound, equivalent to two months' wages for a manservant. Such an expensive price is really out of reach for the general public of England, but the English people are born with the temperament of vassal elegance, and the expensive price does not stop their yearning for elegance and nobility, not to mention the fragrance from the East, there is really an irresistible temptation.

In 1657, the merchant Thomas Garvey opened the first teahouse in London, selling Chinese tea to the public for the first time, and advertised it on a gold-sprinkled poster listing 14 medicinal properties of Chinese tea, such as headaches, stones, urine sand, edema, dehydration, scurvy, drowsiness or dreaminess, memory loss, diarrhea or constipation, stroke, and so on.

In the 18th century, Chinese tea in Scotland, England, Great Britain and the British Isles was not only a symbol of elegance and nobility, but also became the daily necessities of the people of the three islands together with butter and bread.

Overnight, more than 2,000 teahouses popped up on the streets of London. "When the clock strikes 4 p.m., everything in the world stops for tea." Although the folk songs circulating on the streets of London are not without exaggeration, the charm and temptation of afternoon tea to the British can be seen from this.

In 1755, an Italian who had traveled to England wrote of what he had witnessed in London: "Even the most ordinary maids had to drink tea twice a day to show their status, and they made it a condition that they had written it into their deeds beforehand, because of this special clause the employer was required to pay an amount equal to the wages of an Italian maid in one day."

Because of tea, in the 50 years between 1710 and 1760 alone, the British Empire poured 26 million pounds of silver into Qing China (if measured in two, it must be multiplied by four on this base). The silver of the British Empire originally came from the triangular trade between Africa and the Americas, that is, local industrial products and spirits were first shipped to Africa for sale, and then African black slaves were purchased with the sales funds and shipped to the Americas and sold to farmers, and then the sugar, cotton, and coffee were bought back with the proceeds of the transaction, and the surplus was exchanged for silver to be shipped back to the empire.

After the 70s of the 18th century, silver production in the Americas continued to decline, and the empire had to export as much as 2.5 million taels of silver every year because of the import of Chinese tea. At this time, Chinese tea was no longer just a bowl of fragrant tea in the hand, but in the eyes of a group of perceptive imperial elites, it had become a kind of lethal weapon, which was pointing at the edge and was deeply stabbing at the lifeblood of the empire's economy.

"Only tea has managed to conquer the world."

Standing at the Llerger cemetery in Sutherland, 21-year-old Dupernicus looked at the two plants engraved on William Chatton's tombstone, and the above sentence popped into his mind.

Alan McFaal, in his book The Green-Gold, The Empire of Tea, does not comment on Warren Hastings's proposal to compete with Chinese tea and the war that followed, but it is clear from the affirmative form of the previous sentence that the author has made a moral judgment about it.

And at this moment in this country, Russian businessman Eugens is shaking his head, his lips biting, and his pale blue eyes flashing with questioning.

Under the Kremlin's crystal lotus chandelier, the Tsar stood up from the silver seat inlaid with turquoise gemstones and walked towards him with a smile on his face. Eugenes stepped forward to offer the gift in his hand, the queen took it with both hands, opened the tin lid, and a wisp of fragrance suddenly filled every corner of the palace.

Over the years, the royal tribute tea has been the exclusive monopoly of Eugens's ocean, and it is needless to say that it can be a royal tribute to the royal family, not to mention the huge profits, but more importantly, it is the supreme glory and a golden sign that no money can grab. Because of this, becoming a royal tea supplier is like an invisible war, with many merchants fighting openly and secretly, and using all kinds of strategic means. If you dedicate this wonderful fragrance in your hand to the Tsar......

This is a past incident before the farmer came into contact with the Russian businessman Eukins:

At this time, the corners of Eukins's mouth couldn't help but open, and he shook his head again and again at the foreign comprador Zhang Jingzhi: It's not Darjeeling, it's not Uwo, and it's not like Qi Hong. Zhang Jingzhi turned his gaze to the blue and white porcelain cup in Eugenes' hand, and told Eugenes that this tea was specially put into the tin can for him this morning, and it was called Yihong.

Yi Hong? - Eugene shrugged his shoulders and let out a soft boo.

Zhang Jingzhi nodded with a smile, he wanted to continue, to introduce the ancient county of western Hubei - Nanyi County to the foreign master in front of him, who called himself a doctor of tea, and introduce the thousand-year-old "tea ancestral tree" and the ancient tea forest with the imperial title "Nanguo Tianjiao", he was about to open his mouth to speak, but suddenly, he closed his mouth again and replaced it with a smile full of piles on his face.

Since Xianfeng and Tongzhi in the Qing Dynasty, the export price of Chinese tea has been declining, and foreigners have colluded to deliberately suppress the price of tea, relying on the capital in their hands, sitting on one side, and taking advantage of it as a thing.

Originally, as a comprador of a foreign bank, Zhang Jingzhi could make his own decisions when buying and selling, but not long after this Eugene Si came to Hankou, no matter how big or small the business, there was no longer the right to advocate for him, and Eugenes's eyes told him that "Yi Hong" Miaoxiang had been deeply attracted to it, and tried his best to lower the price with one hand and coax the sales with the other, which was Eugenes's usual trick.

This time, Zhang Jingzhi could not let Eugens's trick succeed, in order to help his little fellow farmer open up a new world in the Hankou Tea Market, he wanted to borrow a trick used by the soldiers, first hang Eugens's appetite, as much as possible, hang his appetite high.

Eugene seemed to have a glimpse of Zhang Jingzhi's heart at this time, he tasted the "Yi Hong" in the cup, and looked at Zhang Jingzhi's face with a smile.

Zhang Jingzhi tried his best to make the smile on his face appear humble and flattering, and consciously let the tone be humorous, showing natural and relaxed: and Eugene has always believed in his own nose, and I think it is up to your nose to decide this.

Eugens sat in the small rosewood high-back chair placed in the center of the hall, and in his office room, there was only one chair, and whoever entered had to stand, and spoke at the command of Eukins, who was the only one sitting in the chair.

The chair on which Eugenes sits is beautifully made and expensive to build to fully show his special status.

Tea turned out to be a trump card in Eukins's hand.

Later, Zhang Jingzhi talked to Nonglu about it, and they laughed unconsciously.