11. Cinnamon

The tree is 1.60 meters high, one meter wide, three centimeters thick at the stem, and has a grayish-white surface. The branches stretch upward and are slightly spread out, with an angle of 50-60 degrees. The branches and leaves are quite dense, with an angle of 60-70 degrees. The leaves are thick and crisp, dark green in color, with smooth leaf surface, leaf margin turned into a tile shape, leaf tip blunt, leaf length 9.1 cm, width 3.6 cm, oval shape. The leaf veins are thin and hidden, with 7 pairs in number, and the serrations are shallow and sparse, with 28 pairs in number. It has strong budding ability, many flowers, small flowers, and crown diameter of 2.5 cm. The petals are milky white, four large and two small, 1.4 cm long and 1.3 cm wide. The filament is slender and short, nine centimeters long, divided into three parts at one third, the ovary is densely covered with fine hairs, the calyx is five, and the length and width are both four millimeters, and the receptacle is 1.2 centimeters long. The fruit has one or two more cells, with green-brown skin. The fruit is larger than Qilan, 1.57 cm long and 1.6 cm wide, mostly round and dark gray in color. This kind of tea seems to have weak disease resistance. Several plants in the survey site were mostly affected by coal disease.

Niu’s Note

Cinnamon was not cultivated on a large scale during the Republic of China, and the survey in this article records that there were only a few plants at the survey site. The appearance of cinnamon varieties is very sudden, and is only recorded in the "New Chronicles of Chong'an County". It is named after the aroma of the variety, and is also called "Yu Gui". Its location is mostly said by locals to be at Mazhen Peak, not Matou Rock. "New Chronicles of Chong'an County" was produced around the 27th year of the Republic of China and was edited by the then county magistrate Liu Chaoran. Liu Chaoran, courtesy name Wanli, was born in Jinjiang, Fujian Province. He was a graduate of Meiji University in Japan and served as the magistrate of Chong'an County in 1938. Zheng Fengren, Zibishan, was born in Longyan, Fujian. He has served successively as the Speaker of the Fujian Provincial Assembly, the President of the Fujian Provincial Higher Tribunal, and a professor at the School of Liberal Arts of Xiamen University. He once compiled the county annals of eight counties in Fujian. Composed by editors and background of the times. I speculate that cinnamon tea is a Wuyishan variety produced in the late Qing Dynasty and early Republic of China. It has a short history and was not popular among the major tea shops at that time. It was only after the founding of the People's Republic of China that it was promoted on a large scale. In the 1980s, he successively won gold medals at the national, provincial and ministerial levels, and was valued by the Tea Science Institute. Currently, 70% of Wuyi Mountain’s tea raw materials are composed of narcissus and cinnamon. As a highly aromatic tea, cinnamon is also an important blending ingredient of Wuyi Famous Flower Tea. Some teas worth hundreds or tens of thousands taste like the cinnamon variety, but the name has been changed. Although they are both cinnamon, due to different plants and locations, the leaf openings are also different. Some are extremely small. I have also seen cinnamon as big as a palm, and the variety can only be identified from the leaf edges.

As for Niulankeng cinnamon, which has become popular in recent years, it has the same feeling as the swallows in front of the common people in the old days, flying into the very Wang Xie family. He has the pedigree of "the son of a mouse can dig holes". After all, in a small land, many varieties are planted by cuttings, and the root system is not deep, so the quality will inevitably be affected. But as long as this logic of origin is used, the most noble must be distinguished in the end. Therefore, beef is even divided into grades according to the method of fattening cattle, and different grades have different prices. It is different from ordinary people, and it is said that it has the feeling of Australian Kobe beef. Once the value of scarcity is over-hyped, what is satisfied is actually people's desire for possession. Rarity is not a reason to be distinguished, but a noble name is. The mirror used by Napoleon, the spittoon of the Empress Dowager Cixi, etc. But no matter how noble your reputation is, there will inevitably be times when you are left in the cold.

Sometimes when it comes to rock tea, drinking it to such an extent may lead to the word "confused". Even if you know how to taste the varieties, you still have to mix it with some worldly sophistication. In tea, you will not drink tea until you have no friends. Just like, when I ask Liu Feng many questions, he will answer me truthfully. I will continue to ask: Why is the fact like this but he like that. Liu Feng usually answers: That person is very nice and treats me very well. Then list the many benefits of that person. It may involve that facts are always contrary to human feelings, and it just happens to fall into the category of "no one is perfect". Therefore, in my "tea book", I classify all teas that are deviant from practical logic but are inexplicably hot into the "imperfect human" category, because we are still human beings and there are still various aspects of human nature... which cannot be avoided. Brother Li Zongsheng's "Mortal Song" should be played here to end. Since you are not an immortal, you will inevitably have distracting thoughts. Smile tolerantly and say "good tea" and everyone is happy.

As of today, all the varieties chapters recorded in the book have been completed. Tomorrow we will enter the second section: the reproduction chapter.

In the process of researching the entire variety, the types and origins of Wuyi tea varieties were clarified. These are the basis for tea drinkers to "keep the center", but it is not easy to "keep the center". As a consumer, it is easy to be curious about the name given by the merchant during the consumption process, or do not understand it. Sorry to say all the confusion it caused. These are all normal consumption phenomena and have existed since ancient times. Because I am tone-deaf, I have never paid much attention to musical instruments. Recently, I followed Shi Hong and watched him play the qin, and occasionally touched the guqin. I found that from Guqin to Guzheng to the new Guzheng now, there are more and more strings, and the expressions are becoming more and more specific, but the more concrete they are, the more soulless and tasteless they are. The same goes for tea. If you can't activate your mind, you might as well save yourself the trouble and just drink water. Some people ask why I can use continuous time to get deeply into the tea. I can only use a few paragraphs from Liang Wendao's article to answer.

Because the art of dining table "is very civilized and requires moderation in order to achieve more perfect interpersonal communication."

Drinking can relax people's nerves, make people talkative, and promote the atmosphere at the table, but it must not turn people into beasts. ” So if a person eats and drinks by himself, what’s the point besides just satisfying the appetite of some animals?

But there are always times when we are forced to eat alone. It is not a problem to go to fast food restaurants and tea restaurants to fill our stomachs alone at noon. What if we go to a good restaurant for dinner? The American M.F.K. Fisher is a godmother-level writer in the food industry. In the 1940s, she used to work as a screenwriter in Hollywood and often encountered the embarrassment of eating alone in high-end restaurants. In fact, she is good-looking and a well-known gourmet, so why would she eat alone? We have the impression that diners always have a good meal and don't have to worry about having company. It turns out that this is not necessarily the case. The problem with Fisher is that she is such a good eater that many people dare not treat her to a meal, for fear that she will be picky about the food in the restaurant, or laugh at her taste in ordering food and wine.

Therefore, if Miss Fisher was not cooking at home, she would have to go to a restaurant and choose a good seat to hide and taste the pleasure of delicious food. Over time, she developed the experience of a single woman eating. The main thing is not to go to too many places, get familiar with one or two restaurants, let the waiters know your habits, and arrange a good table for you. The definition of a good table is to stay away from the bar and don't let the men drinking think you're prey waiting to be caught. And the location of this table cannot be the focus of attention in the restaurant, otherwise you alone will definitely become the focus of the diners in the restaurant. But the seat you choose shouldn’t be too dark and dark, because you must have enough lighting to read magazines and books. Fisher recalled that lonely night and found that he had read a lot. ----Liang Wendao's "Eating Alone on Valentine's Day"

Teacher Li Shuyun's book says that people who love tea should have tea lovers to avoid falling into subjective paranoia. I have no rival for tea soup, but in the past few years, whenever I fell into subjective paranoia, I would find two people to cure me. One is the big cat who is very knowledgeable about specialty coffee, and the other is an expert on wine. Huang Xiaoshan. As a male, Big Cat always gives me various examples from Europe and the United States to bypass me when I am obsessed with technical issues. Huang Xiaoshan is a hero among girls. Whenever I am weak, she will always push my reset button without any pain. Under the leadership of the two of them, we drank a lot of excellent coffee and wine. Sometimes I don’t know whether the emergence of human language is progress or regression. If there are no words, just the coming and going of taste, it would be so interesting. Just like I took out the tea of ??1964, her wine of 1964, and tasted the many similarities between 1964 under the same sky; just like the certain bubble tea with the obvious aroma of white flowers and Esmeralda's coffee The taste is vaguely similar. The language of this kind of taste buds is more silent, but it is extremely tacit because of silence.

(Lin Fuquan·Huniu This article is reproduced from Saoye Shanfang)