Chapter 2 Chapter 1 Remnants of Tea Classics

The story begins with my grandfather. My grandfather, Lu Donghao, was born in Tianmen, Hubei in 1900. He has been a teacher for generations.At that time, the country will not have a country, and there is no food to eat, so who has the heart to study.The private school finally closed down. In order to earn a living, Lu Donghao did several small businesses, but they closed down before opening. December 26, 1938 was undoubtedly the most important day for Yunnan tea history, and even for Lu Donghao.On this day, Yunnan China Tea Trading Co., Ltd. was formally established. The office is located at No. 208 Weiyuan Street, Kunming City. The chairman is Miao Yuntai and the manager is Zheng Hechun.This company is the predecessor of today's Yunnan Tea Import and Export Company.

After several failed business ventures, Lu Donghao has already ruined his family fortune, leaving him with nothing left.Forced to do nothing, Lu Donghao went to Yunnan to work as a tea maker through a friend's introduction.Lu Donghao already had a wife, but his wife thought he was worthless. The night before going to Yunnan, she ran away with other men with her butt pouted. Lu Donghao was quite open about this, and went to Yunnan alone without looking for his wife back. After all, Lu Donghao is a sour literati. Although he pretended to have drank a few sips of tea, he knew nothing about tea ceremony.Lu Donghao was kicked out without any suspense after spending a year at the Yunnan company. Unexpectedly, this was a turning point in his fate.

In 1939, Yunnan China Tea Trade Co., Ltd. established Shunning Tea Factory, Fohai Tea Factory, Kangzang Tea Factory, Fuxing Tea Factory and Yiliang Tea Factory. Fohai Tea Factory is the predecessor of Menghai Tea Factory. Menghai used to be called Fohai, located in Xishuangbanna.There is high temperature all year round, abundant rainfall, and dense primitive vegetation, so it is regarded as the "hometown of miasma".Even so, Fohai was selected due to its unique geographical and historical conditions. Fohai Tea Factory was the one with the most difficult conditions among the five new tea factories at that time, and many tea workers were discouraged by it.Lu Donghao had never been to Fohai, so he didn't know how hard it was, so he was the first to sign up for it.At the beginning of the establishment of the factory, the head office transferred 25 primary tea workers from the original Enshi Tea Factory, 20 Jiangxi refined tea workers, and 20 students.Lu Donghao is not even considered a student, but a coolie in the factory. In order not to starve to death, Lu Donghao had to grit his teeth and persevere.

The geographical location of Fohai is very remote. A group of workers took a car from Yiliang to Yuxi, and then hired caravans to travel through Eshan, Yuanjiang, Mojiang, Pu'er, Simao, Cheli and other places to reach Fohai after a long journey of more than a month.At that time, there was no question of who owned the land in Fohai. Whoever wanted to use the land could just apply to the local chieftain and get the buyer's consent to occupy it.Forest wood is also unowned. You can cut it however you like. Only moso bamboo is a crop grown by local residents, which must be obtained through purchase.

The site of the Fohai factory was set on a piece of wasteland of more than 80 mu to build a factory building, so Lu Donghao and other coolies went to the nearby mountains to cut wood.Unexpectedly, during a felling, Lu Donghao had an adventure. That day, the poisonous sun was high, and Lu Donghao was sweating all over his body. He was lamenting that his life was unsatisfactory, but he heard a commotion in the jungle.Seeing a middle-aged man in ragged clothes fell down in the haystack, Lu Donghao was curious and walked over to see what happened, but unexpectedly he was shocked.It turned out that the man's mouth was full of blood, his tongue had been cut off, and there were many scars on his body, even if he could survive, life would be worse than death.

Lu Donghao used to be a teacher, but now he only deals with tea. At most, he has seen killing pigs and fish, but he has never witnessed such bloody scenes.Lu Donghao wanted to carry the middle-aged man back to the factory, but the man desperately grabbed his sleeve and took out a book with a blue cover.Lu Donghao can't do anything else, he is best at literacy, he glanced at the blue cover, there are two large characters written on it: The Classic of Tea. "The Classic of Tea" was written by Lu Yu in the Tang Dynasty. It is the first book on tea in the world. "The Classic of Tea" has a very high status in tea culture, so it is widely spread, but this book has a thousand-year mystery.It turns out that in the "Tea Classic", a total of famous teas from 13 provinces and 42 states were introduced, but the famous Pu'er tea from Yunnan was omitted.Regarding this doubtful point, there are many kinds of guesses, but they are all barely tenable, and they are completely untenable under careful speculation.

Lu Donghao took the "Tea Classic" and looked at the middle-aged man in confusion, not understanding the importance of this scripture.You must know that this scripture has been handed down, and he has seen it several times in the factory, so this scripture is not unusual.Lu Donghao wanted to ask the middle-aged man why he was like this, but the man lost his tongue, so how could he speak.Lu Donghao didn't have a chance to ask, because the middle-aged man quickly pushed him away, and hurriedly gestured to run away. In a blink of an eye, several blond foreign devils appeared in the hot jungle. Seeing this, Lu Donghao's legs went weak.At that time, China had been invaded by foreign powers. He had seen the brutality of foreign devils, and he immediately guessed that the middle-aged man's tongue cutting must be related to foreign devils.The middle-aged man waved his hands in panic, but Lu Donghao didn't dare to be brave, so he whispered that he would protect the scripture, and then fled out of the jungle desperately.

After that, Lu Donghao never saw that middle-aged man again, and he didn't know what would happen to that man in the end. That night, led by the chieftain, the foreign devils searched the tea factory for the book of tea.Although the foreign devils had no guns and there were not many people, everyone was afraid of foreigners, even the chieftain nodded and bowed.Except for Lu Donghao, no one knew that the foreign devils came for the scriptures, and they thought they were here to seize the tea factory.In the end, neither the foreign devils nor the chieftain found the scripture, so the matter was left alone.

In fact, Lu Donghao did not throw away the scripture. He had expected this, so he buried the scripture in the jungle early in the morning.The next morning, Lu Donghao learned from others that the group of foreigners were British, and they had already left Fohai.Hearing the news, Lu Donghao ran back to the jungle and secretly dug out the scripture, but he was immediately dumbfounded. Things happened suddenly yesterday, Lu Donghao didn't have time to pay attention to the details, and he didn't know that the scriptures were actually a fragmented copy - the last few pages of it had been forcibly torn off.Lu Donghao was puzzled, why did the British want to obtain a scripture that was available everywhere, and why did the middle-aged man risk his life to protect the scripture?

With doubts, Lu Donghao opened the book of "The Book of Tea". He had read the "Book of Tea" before, but he felt that the content was jerky and difficult to understand. Although the explanation of tea was very detailed, he couldn't understand it.To Lu Donghao's surprise, this "The Classic of Tea" was different from the "Book of Tea" written by Lu Yu, and the content was completely different. Lu Yu's "The Classic of Tea" has ten chapters in general, namely, the source of the first; the utensils of the second; the creation of the third; the utensils of the fourth; the cooking of the fifth; the drinking of the sixth; the things of the seventh; Ten pictures.Although the "Tea Classic" in Lu Donghao's hand is also written by Lu Yu, it is only divided into two parts. Strange things in China are full of weird theories, even superstitious.In fact, there are many legends and myths recorded in the seven events of the original "Tea Classic", but none of them are bizarre in the fragmented version.It's a pity that there are a lot of pages in the second part of the fragmented version. Looking at the previous records, it seems that the last few pages revealed a secret.

However, this is all guessed by Lu Donghao out of thin air. He has no chance to see the torn content, but the previous content has greatly helped him.With the help of the incomplete "Tea Classic", Lu Donghao was like a fish in water, and his tea-making skills became more and more exquisite. Suddenly, a carp leaped over the dragon's gate and became a refined tea craftsman. At the beginning, Lu Donghao was inconspicuous and had always been a coolie. His status changed when he planted tea trees.At that time, more than half of the factory building was completed, and the tea trees were about to be planted. Naturally, Lu Donghao and the others completed these tasks.Under the command of the tea man, Lu Donghao and several strong men were busy all day and night, but Lu Donghao felt that the method of planting was wrong. In the remnant version of "The Classic of Tea", there is a sentence "tea likes the shade of high mountains, and the morning of sun".Lu Donghao could understand it, which means that tea trees are suitable for growing on sunny hillsides and shaded by trees, but the tea maker ordered them to be planted in shaded places.Lu Donghao was originally a teacher, so it was no problem to understand ancient Chinese. After reading the "Tea Classic" for a few days, he already understood a lot of tea ceremony, so he asked questions desperately. The tea maker lost face and immediately scolded him to stop talking nonsense, but all this was seen by the person in charge.The person in charge was Wang Zhongwen, who had studied abroad and had no airs. He walked over and asked Lu Donghao why he said that.Lu Donghao happened to hold back his grievances, so he seized the opportunity to speak out all at once. Lu Donghao said that tea trees originated in the deep mountains and dense forests in Southwest China. Subtropical forest plants grow together and are shaded by tall trees. They grow under conditions with a lot of diffuse light, forming a shade-tolerant habit.If the characteristics of a thing are changed, its essence will change, and the taste of tea will also change accordingly. Wang Zhongwen quickly understood that although what Lu Donghao said was abstract and even superstitious, it was not unreasonable.Because plants produce nutrients through photosynthesis, the intensity of light will affect the process of photosynthesis, and the yield and quality of tea will change accordingly under the chain influence. After a few days, Wang Zhongwen observed Lu Donghao carefully, and he was surprised to find that Lu Donghao knew a lot of tea principles, even more than refined tea craftsmen.Logically, Lu Donghao became a primary tea maker, and then changed from a primary tea maker to a refined tea worker.Someone asked him many times why he suddenly knew so much about the tea ceremony. Lu Donghao just laughed and said that he learned it while watching, and never mentioned the incomplete "Tea Classic" to anyone.Until one day, something happened suddenly, which brought another big turning point in Lu Donghao's life. In 1941, the Pacific War broke out, the Japanese invaded the South Pacific, and the war approached Myanmar and Thailand.The Fohai area was bombed and strafed by Japanese planes, and people were panicked and turbulent.The Kunming Dianzhong Tea Company ordered the entire factory to retreat, but at this time, the Fohai Tea Factory had entered the final stage of full completion, and the workers did not want to leave at all. Finally, they still left, but Lu Donghao fell behind when they were evacuating.In order to avoid the Japanese bombing, Lu Donghao had no choice but to flee and hide, and finally ran into an old house.The house has long been unoccupied, and the locals said it was built by an Englishman in 1920, but the family never came back after returning to China.Later, the house was occupied by the locals, but for some reason people always disappeared, so there were rumors that there were unclean things in the house.As time passed, no one dared to approach the house again, and like other ghost houses in legends, the house was also abandoned. Lu Donghao had heard so many stories about fox spirits and ghosts that he could compile a book, so he scoffed at them and didn't believe them.While avoiding the bombing, Lu Donghao was forced to run into the house, but this time he saw something unimaginable.Fortunately, Lu Donghao walked out of the house safely and left Yunnan safely. In 1949, after the liberation of the whole country, the Fohai Tea Factory came back to life again, but Lu Donghao quickly started a big business in tea, and traveled across the ocean to settle in Malaysia and never returned to China.Someone once asked Lu Donghao how he became a wealthy businessman so quickly from scratch, but he only said it was luck. When I was born, Lu Donghao, my grandfather, only mentioned once when he was drunk that his success was due to the incomplete "Tea Classic".When my grandfather hid in the haunted house that day, something special happened. With the reminder from the "Tea Classic", he got a golden box, which contained an extremely precious thing, and thus made his fortune.Strangely, the grandfather said that he did not take the gold box, but only the contents of the box, and only part of it. I asked my grandfather what it was that was so expensive that it belonged to the gold box, and what happened to him in the house, but my grandfather smiled and said nothing, only saying that the only wish now is to read the last fragment of "The Classic of Tea". What was written on those pages.