readx;? Zhang Jiashi promoted the merchant status of the Great Qin Empire and encouraged merchant activities, mainly because of another consideration. Pen % fun % Pavilion www.biquge.info

That is, judging from the profit comparison of China's ancient foreign trade, except for before China ravaged the land of China in the category of "opium", China's foreign trade can be said to be in a favorable position of huge trade surplus.

To a large extent, this trade surplus is brought about by three aspects.

Silk, tea and porcelain were among the commodities that benefited the most from China's foreign trade.

The Great Qin Empire itself already had the use of silk, tea, and porcelain.

However, in addition to the fact that silk is relatively popular and is the main product of the current trade, the use of tea and porcelain is not popular in the Great Qin Empire.

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Tea leaves, which refer to the leaves and buds of the tea plant. Also known as tea, 槚, tea, 荈. It generally refers to the leaves of the evergreen shrub tea tree that can be used to make tea, as well as the drinks brewed from these leaves, and later extended to all herbal teas brewed with plant flowers, leaves, seeds, and roots, such as "chrysanthemum tea", and "herbal tea" brewed with various medicinal herbs, also known as thunder buds in Chinese literature. In some countries, teas are also made from the leaves of other plants such as fruits and herbs, such as "fruit tea".

Tea originated in China, and tea was first used as a sacrifice. However, it was used as a vegetable by people in the late Spring and Autumn Period, developed into medicinal use in the middle of the Western Han Dynasty, and developed into a high-end drink for the court in the late Western Han Dynasty. The earliest remains of artificially planted tea were found at the Tianluo Mountain site in Yuyao, Zhejiang, which has a history of more than 6,000 years. Tea drinking began in China. The leaves are leathery, oblong or oval, and can be soaked directly in boiling water, and are divided into six categories according to the variety and production method and the shape of the product.

According to the season, it can be divided into spring tea, summer tea, autumn tea, and winter tea. It is reprocessed into a variety of wool tea or refined tea leaves to form re-added tea, including flower tea, pressed tea, extracted tea, medicinal health tea, tea food, tea-containing beverages, etc.

It is said that in the Shennong era, it has been discovered that the fresh leaves of the tea tree can detoxify. "Shennong's Classic of Materia Medica" once recorded: "Shennong tasted a hundred herbs, encountered seventy-two poisons every day, and got tea to solve them", which reflects the origin of the ancient discovery of tea cure, which shows that China has used tea for at least 4,000 years.

In the Tang and Song dynasties, tea has become a common drinking product that is "indispensable for everyone". The writer Wang Xinjian wrote a poem "Song of Tea": Thousands of white clouds are selected, and the copper pot is roasted and fried on firewood. The mud pot is mellow and poetic, and the porcelain ou is green and happy. The old man is enlightened and raises Yazhi, and Yuan Liang talks about dispelling the noise of vulgarity. Without going through Nirvana, how can you keep the source fresh.

Gu Yanwu's "Rizhilu" in the Ming Dynasty wrote: "The Qin people took Shu, and they knew what to do. It can be seen that the custom of drinking tea came from Sichuan. Because of the thousands of mountains and rivers, the "Shu Road" is dangerous, and tea planting and drinking are limited to Sichuan.

In other regions, tea is probably only used for food or as a sacrificial object.

During the years when Zhang Jiashi traveled to the Great Qin Empire, the way of drinking tea was actually not used anywhere, because even if the fresh tea leaves were dried and not made accordingly, the tea soaked from the tea leaves was ......

He tried it once, and it almost didn't squirt out.

Zhang Jiashi said that this may be the main reason why the tea drinking culture has not been successfully promoted.

Because even if it is green tea, its production has to go through the corresponding process to be considered a passing tea:

The processing of green tea is simply divided into three steps: finishing, rolling and drying, of which the key lies in finishing. The fresh leaves are passivated by the activity of the enzymes, and the various chemical components contained in them are basically changed by the physical and chemical action of heat without the influence of enzymes, thus forming the quality characteristics of green tea.

Finishing plays a decisive role in the quality of green tea. Through high temperature, the characteristics of enzymes in fresh leaves are destroyed, and the oxidation of polyphenols is inhibited to prevent the red transformation of leaves, and part of the water in the leaves is evaporated at the same time, so that the leaves become soft, creating conditions for rolling and shaping. With the evaporation of water, the low-boiling aromatic substances with grass gas in the fresh leaves volatilize and disappear, so that the aroma of tea is improved.

With the exception of specialty teas, the process is carried out in the finishing machine. The factors that affect the quality of greening include the temperature of greening, the amount of leaves, the type of greening machine, the time, and the method of greening. They are a whole, implicating and restricting each other.

Due to the different effects of mechanical or manual operation in the drying process, the tea has formed different shapes such as elongated, bead-shaped, fan-flat, needle-shaped, spiral-shaped, etc., so it is divided into long fried green, round fried green, flat fried green and so on.

After the long fried green is refined, it is called Mei tea, and the colors of the finished product include Zhen Mei, Gong Xi, Yu Tea, Needle Mei, Xiu Mei, etc., each with different quality characteristics. Such as Zhen Mei: the cord is thin and straight or its shape is like the beautiful eyebrows of a lady, the color is green and moist and frosty, the aroma is high and fresh, the taste is strong and refreshing, the soup color, the bottom of the leaf is green and slightly yellow and bright; The shape of the particles is similar to the pearl tea, the round knot is even, does not contain broken tea, the color is green and even, the aroma is pure, the taste is still strong, the soup color is yellow and green, the bottom of the leaves is still tender and even; rain tea: the original system is separated from the pearl tea of the long tea rain tea is mostly obtained from the eyebrow tea, the shape is thin and short, still tight, the color is green and even, the aroma is pure, the taste is still strong, the soup color is yellow and green, the bottom of the leaves is still tender and even; round fried green: the shape of the particles is round and tight, due to the different origins and production methods, it is divided into flat fried green, Quangang Huibai and Yongxi Huoqing, etc.

Flat fried green: produced in Shengxian, Xinchang, Shangyu and other counties in Zhejiang. Because the history of Mao tea concentrated in Shaoxing Pingshui Town refining and distribution, the shape of the finished tea is fine and round like a pearl, so it is called "Pingshui Zhu Tea" or called flat green, Mao tea is called flat fried green;

It is dried in a drying cage. Most of the roasted green hair tea is reprocessed and refined, and the tea blank is used as smoked flower tea, and the aroma is generally not as high as that of fried green, and a small number of roasted green famous teas are of excellent quality. With its shape, it can also be divided into strip tea, pointed tea, sheet tea, needle-shaped tea, etc. Strip-shaped roasted green is produced in all major tea-producing areas, and pointed and flake-shaped tea is mainly produced in Anhui, Zhejiang and other provinces and cities. Among them, the special roasted green mainly includes Mabian Yunwu Tea, Huangshan Maofeng, Taiping Houkui, Tingxi Lanxiang, Lu'an Gua Pian, Jingting Green Snow, Tianshan Green Tea, Guzhu Purple Bamboo Shoots, Jiangshan Green Peony, Emei Peak, Jinshui Cuifeng, Xiazhou Bifeng, Nannuo Baihao, etc. Such as Huangshan Maofeng: produced in Huangshan, She County, Anhui Province. The shape is delicate and slightly curly, the buds are fat and strong, even, there are sharp hairs, the shape is similar to the "bird's tongue", the color is golden and buttery, commonly known as ivory, the aroma is fresh and high, the soup color is clear and bright, the taste is mellow and fresh, and the leaves are full of buds and leaves, thick and bright.

It is sun-dried. It is mainly distributed in Hunan, Hubei, Guangdong, Guangxi, Sichuan, Yunnan, Guizhou and other provinces. The quality of Yunnan large-leaved green tea is the best, which is called "Yunnan Qing"; other qualities such as Sichuan Qing, Qianqing, Guiqing, and Eqing have their own merits, but they are not as good as Yunnan Qing.

Steam finishing is an ancient method of finishing in China. During the Tang Dynasty, it was transmitted to Japan and has been followed to this day, while China has changed to pot frying since the Ming Dynasty. Steamed green is the use of steam to destroy the enzyme activity in fresh leaves, forming the quality characteristics of dry tea dark green, light green tea soup and green tea bottom, but the aroma is stuffy with green gas, and the astringency is also heavier, which is not as fresh as the pot fried green tea. Due to the needs of foreign trade, China has also produced a small amount of steamed green tea since the mid-80s. The main varieties are Enshi Yulu, which is produced in Enshi, Hubei, and Chinese sencha, which is produced in Zhejiang, Fujian and Anhui provinces.

Green tea is the oldest type of tea in history. Ancient humans collected wild tea buds and leaves for drying and collecting, which can be regarded as the beginning of green tea processing in a broad sense, at least 3,000 years ago. However, the processing of green tea in the real sense began with the invention of the steaming method in the 8th century A.D., and the invention of the fried green method in the 12th century.

Kneading is a process that shapes the shape of green tea. By using external force, the leaves are kneaded and lightened, rolled into strips, the volume is reduced, and it is easy to brew. At the same time, part of the tea juice is squeezed and attached to the leaf surface, which also plays an important role in improving the taste concentration of tea. The kneading process of making green tea is divided into cold kneading and hot kneading. The so-called cold kneading, that is, the green leaves are kneaded after being cooled, and the hot kneading is the kneading of the green leaves without being spread and cooled. Young leaves should be kneaded cold to keep the bright yellow and green soup color at the bottom of the tender green leaves, and old leaves should be kneaded hot to help the cords tighten and reduce the breakage.

The purpose of drying, evaporating the water, and finishing the shape, give full play to the aroma of tea. There are three drying methods: drying, frying and drying. The drying process of green tea is generally dried first and then fried. Because the water content of the tea leaves after rolling is still very high, if it is fried directly, it will quickly form a lump in the pot of the dryer, and the tea juice is easy to stick to the wall of the pot. Therefore, the tea leaves are dried first to reduce the water content to meet the requirements of pot frying.

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In Zhang Jiashi's Qingyu Lingshu, there are many types of tea production processes.

But for him, wanting to promote tea drinking culture is not just something that one person can guide.

Why do you say that?

It's very simple, because there are very few areas where tea trees are planted in the Great Qin Empire, and even the Guanzhong area, where tea trees were planted earlier, is only a few distribution areas.

For Zhang Jiashi, this can be said to be the biggest difficulty in the implementation of tea drinking culture.

As the saying goes, it is difficult for a good woman to cook without rice, and this is the truth.

For Zhang Jiashi, although the profit of tea is smaller than that of silk and porcelain, and in some ways it is difficult to transport. After all, if the tea is not well preserved, it is easy to deteriorate due to moisture. This is relatively low for the foreign trade of tea, compared to porcelain and silk.

Of course, silk can also be affected by some situations, and the fragility of porcelain is also a very serious problem, after all, in the Great Qin Empire, there is no premise for a better way to deal with this aspect.

Although Zhang Jiashi also had some means to improve some problems, but because there was no cotton and no rubber, he thought that he would take some measures to avoid the fragility of porcelain, in fact, it should not have much effect. Maybe it's better than nothing.

If you want to make tea like a sentence in the evaluation of future generations, Zhang Jiashi believes that it is not possible to do it in a short time.

And this evaluation is: "The only commodity that China has conquered the world in history is tea." ”

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In the later generations of Zhang Jiashi, residents of more than 100 countries and regions around the world loved to taste tea. In some places, tea drinking is promoted as an artistic enjoyment. The way of drinking tea varies from country to country.

Sri Lanka: Sri Lankan residents love to drink strong tea, which is bitter and astringent, but they feel that it tastes great. The country's black tea sells well all over the world, and there are large trading houses that distribute tea in the capital Colombo, with a tea tasting department, where experts taste the taste with their tongues and then check the grade and price.

United Kingdom: People from all walks of life in the UK love drinks. Tea can almost be called the national drink of the United Kingdom. The British love freshly brewed strong tea with a sugar or two and a little cold milk.

Thailand: Thais love to add ice to tea, and it cools down or even freezes all at once, which is iced tea. In Thailand, local tea drinkers do not drink hot tea, and it is usually foreign guests who drink hot tea.

Mongolia: Mongolians love to eat brick tea. They pounded the brick tea into a powder in a wooden mortar, added water and boiled it in a pot, then added some and also added milk and goat's milk.

New Zealand: New Zealanders make drinking tea one of life's greatest enjoyment. Many institutions, schools, factories and mines also set special tea drinking times. Tea shops and teahouses abound in various towns and villages.

Mali: Malian people love to drink tea after meals. They put tea leaves and water in a teapot and stew it on a tandoor to boil. After the tea is boiled, add sugar and pour a cup per person. Their method of boiling tea is different: every day, they boil water in a tin can, put in the tea leaves, let it boil until the cured meat is cooked at the same time, and then eat the meat and drink the tea at the same time.

Canada: Canadians have a special method of making tea, first blanch a clay pot, put a teaspoon of tea leaves, then pour boiling water on it, soak it for seven or eight minutes, and then pour the tea leaves into another hot pot for drinking. Usually cheese and sugar are added.

Russia: Russians make tea, often add a slice of lemon to each cup, and some use fruit pulp instead of lemon. In winter, mulled wine is sometimes added to prevent colds.

Egypt: Sweet tea in Egypt. The Egyptians were hospitable, often serving a cup of hot tea with a lot of sugar in it, and after drinking only two or three cups of this sweet tea, it would feel sticky in the mouth, and they didn't even want to eat.

North Africa: Peppermint tea from North Africa. North Africans drink tea and like a few fresh mint leaves and some rock sugar in the green camellia, which is cool and delicious when drinking. When a guest visits, the guest has to finish the three cups of tea that the host has given him to be polite.

South America: Yerba mate in South America. In many countries in South America, tea is made from the leaves of the local yerba mate tree, which is both refreshing and invigorating. They were savoring it slowly from the teacup with a straw.