Laoqing tea is a representative tea among Hubei dark teas. The surface of the tea brick is green-black, and the brick surface is printed with the word "Sichuan", so it is also called "green brick tea" and "green brick tea". "Sichuan Tea"; Laoqing tea is mainly produced in Xianning, Tongshan, Tongcheng, Puqi and Chongyang areas of Xianning City, Hubei Province. It is one of the four major representatives of Chinese dark tea, together with Yunnan Pu'er, Hunan dark tea and Sichuan dark tea. Biancha is equally famous.

Hubei Laoqing tea has a green-brown color, a subtle aroma, a bright red soup, a smooth entrance, a strong flavor without greenness, and a mellow taste. It not only has a rich aroma and elegant taste, but is also rich in selenium and polypeptides. Sugars, thearubigins, polyphenols, caffeine, protein and other substances are beneficial to human health. They are refreshing and refreshing, produce body fluids and quench thirst, resist cold, eliminate fat and greasy, resolve stagnation and strengthen the stomach, etc. It has health benefits, especially for people with cold stomachs, and is a rare and good drink. The taste of old green tea is a fresh and elegant floral and fruity aroma. Due to the age and tenderness of the raw materials and the workmanship, the aroma will also change accordingly. Since old green tea has the characteristic of getting more fragrant with age, its value preservation and appreciation role is also becoming increasingly prominent. Therefore, Much loved by collectors.

The production steps of Hubei old green tea are material selection-greening-wood pile-steaming-pressing: First of all, material selection is the biggest difference between green brick tea and other teas. For ordinary tea, only the leaf tips are selected. For green brick tea, branches with four to seven leaves are picked from the stems; for greening, the new leaves are removed from impurities and then put into a pot to fry, then repeatedly rolled and then dried naturally to make old green tea. ; Wodui refers to stacking and fermenting Maocha, which is used to remove the greenness and astringency. The Wodui aging process takes at least six months. This process is a key step in the transformation of green brick tea. The aging tea leaves are fully oxidized, giving birth to a unique The microbial flora is also the secret of the unique taste of green brick tea. The fermentation of the raw materials of green brick tea is the key factor that determines the quality of the tea; steaming is to heat the aged tea leaves in a pot; pressing is the final step in making old green tea. In the first step, the steamed tea leaves are poured into wooden molds and pressed into tea bricks. The green brick tea produced in this way has a unique tea flavor and beautiful tea color. The production process of green brick tea has achieved a fully mechanized process, but in the key pressing link, there are still Traditional wooden molds are used to maximize the retention of microorganisms.

In the hinterland of China, on the border of Hunan, Hubei and Jiangxi, there is such an ancient town. Its entry is recorded in "Ci Yuan": "Yanglou Cave, a place name, is located 60 miles southwest of Chibi, Hubei. It is rich in tea and is a large export. "The camel bells were melodious, the horses' hoofs were clanking, and a thousand-mile Eurasian tea road that had been glorious for centuries appeared in front of us. It started from Hankou, crossed the Yellow River against the Han River, and went straight north, passing through the small town of Chak on the Sino-Russian border on the Mongolian prairie. Pictured, the end point is St. Petersburg, Russia, which is another international trade route comparable to the "Silk Road". Compared with the magnificent history and culture of five thousand years, Yangloudong is a bit more charming and mysterious because of the existence of tea. This God-given land is located in Songfeng Mountain, 26 kilometers southwest of Chibi City, and serves as the gateway to Hunan, Hubei and Jiangxi. It is at the junction of three provinces. It has beautiful mountains and clear waters, the singing of birds and the fragrance of flowers, a humid climate, suitable soil, and abundant rainfall, which are very suitable for the growth of tea trees. It is a good place for tea production. The old green tea produced here has its own unique quality and is known as It is known as the "Hometown of Brick Tea". According to legend, hundreds of years ago, the ancestors of the Lei family who moved from Fengcheng, Jiangxi Province, first came here. There was only one sun building with a few goats and a pond below. I don’t know why this place was named. , the people who moved here named it "Yanglou Cave" according to this form. Sheep refers to the goats that are fed on the sun roof, Lou naturally refers to the sun building, and cave refers to the place surrounded by mountains and everywhere. The spring is called Yanglou Cave.

Yangloudong is just an ordinary small town on the Chinese map. However, in human history, it has created a thousands-mile tea road leading to the world through ancient and modern civilizations, because it has many Eurasian countries. Everyone loves Sichuan brand green brick tea.

The formation of this thousands-mile tea road dates back to the 16th and 17th centuries. The ethnic minorities in the Mongolian grasslands and Siberia mainly eat meat. To digest these meats, the best way is to drink old green tea; the locals have the saying "Would rather have three." There is a saying that a day without food cannot be a day without tea. China's old green tea not only became one of the necessities of life for the northern nomads at that time, but was also very popular among the Russian upper class. In the court at that time, drinking tea had become a fashion pursued by many Russian nobles and a symbol of people's social status at that time. The chairman of the Russian Tea Association said: "Russians have long been fond of drinking green brick tea from Yangloudong, and regard drinking green brick tea as a symbol of identity and status." The chairman of the International Tea Committee said: "Yangloudong is known as Wanli Tea. The starting point of the road plays a large role not only in the history of Chinese tea culture, but also in the history of world tea culture.”

The Wanli Tea Road is about 4,000 kilometers long in China, starting from Sheep. Loudong began to reach Kyaktu in Russia. This journey was mainly transported by Chinese merchants. In the two centuries from the Qing Dynasty to the early Republic of China, the Ten Thousand Miles of Tea Road not only played a decisive role in the trade between the East and the West, but also triggered the development of Asia. The comprehensive and profound cultural exchange and integration of the European continent has written a glorious chapter in the history of Eastern civilization and international trade. It is this tea road that lasted more than 200 years, spanned the Eurasian continent, and was comparable to the "Silk Road" of the Han Dynasty that created the immortal legend of Yangloudong. Tea culture expert Li Chuanyou said: "In the middle of the Ming Dynasty, Yangloudong was an important tea distribution center and one of the three birthplaces of our country's Tea Horse Road, because at that time our domestic Shanxi merchants were also very popular in Guangdong. Businessmen, including local businessmen, foreign British tea merchants, and Russian tea merchants, all gathered in Yangloudong.” Tea was cultivated and processed. Before the Song Dynasty, Sichuan brand green brick tea was used as currency for tea-horse trade with Manchuria, Mongolia and Russia. In the early Jiajing period of the Ming Dynasty, which was also its heyday, Yangloudong Ancient Town had more than 200 tea houses, a population of nearly 40,000, five main streets, and more than 100 merchant shops. During the Daoguang period of the Qing Dynasty, tea merchants from Britain, Germany, Japan, Russia and other countries competed to set up tea factories here. The annual export value of Laoqing tea was more than 15 million taels of silver. Domestic tea people from Shanxi, Tianjin and Shanghai also There are documented records that people flocked there and became an internationally famous tea market; for a time, Yangloudong became a world-famous Chinese tea market. This is the pride and pride that Yangloudong has always engraved in the heart, and it also makes Yangloudong this ordinary place. The regional name is therefore covered with a sacred aura of time. According to "Hubei Tongzhi": "In the tenth year of Tongzhi, the tea regulations of each bureau in Chong, Jia, Pu, Ning, Cheng, and Shan counties were rewritten, and black tea and old tea were listed in the regulations." Here is the explanation. Old tea refers to old green tea. It can be seen that old green tea has a production history of more than 100 years. Around 1890, the production of fried basket tea began in Yangloudong, Puqi. The tea leaves are fried and dried, and then beaten into The fragments were packed in bamboo baskets and transported to the north, where they were called fried basket tea. Later, it was developed into green brick tea using old green tea as raw material and steamed and pressed.

The word "chuan" in "chuanzi tea" comes from the pride of Hubei in Yangloudong, Chibi. Since it is produced in Hubei, why is it printed with the word "chuan"? Because in the eyes of the locals, there is another secret to producing good tea in Yangloudong, and that is water. At that time, the tea houses here mainly used Guanyin Spring, Shiren Spring and Liangyin Spring. The three springs came from the Diaojiaolou in Yangloudong. It flows through the river and looks very much like the word Sichuan, so the green brick tea is printed with the word "Sichuan". This word was the golden signboard of the Russian brick tea trade at that time; many Shanxi merchant tea houses gathered in Yangloudong Most of the font sizes also have the character Sichuan, such as Mitama River, Nagayu River, Nagamori River, etc. Moreover, the character Sichuan just symbolizes the endless flow, which can be said to have a special meaning.

In Chinese history, Yanglou Cave is like the swaying note at the end of a story. It is not only the end of the development of tea trade in China in the old days, but also the beginning of the influence of Chinese tea culture on the world; "Pine Peak Enters the Yanglou Cave" , The fragrance of tea surrounds Fengqiu, the ancient rhyme is revealed, and the stone man is thin beside the moon." This ancient poem depicts the wonderful artistic conception of the ancient town of Yangloudong in the Ming and Qing Dynasties.