“液体黄金”大红袍的前世今生

“液体黄金”大红袍的前世今生 LW: Now Yoyo, there’s a very interesting story that you have for us. I don’t know much about it, but maybe you can explain to our listeners. Yoyo: Okay, first of all people know about gold, but do you know what liquid gold is? LW: Liquid gold? Very evocative. Yoyo: Okay. So that is the Chinese tea. Original Chinese tea, dahongpao, doesn’t just cost its weight in gold but also costs more than 30 times its weight in gold, almost 1400 US dollars for a single gram, can you believe it? And over 10000 US dollars for a pot. It is one of the most expensive teas in the world. NL: So this particular botanist called Robert Fortune - which is a fantastic name, I think... LW: Great. Already I’m on board with this entire story. NL: He came to China in 1849 to look for this particular dahongpao tea in Wuyishan mountains because Britain was growing a lot of its tea in India, but obviously a lot of the tea originally came from China, so they were looking to move some tea plants to India where they could grow it themselves. It was difficult for foreigners to get into China in this period of time so he had to disguise himself as a Chinese person to get in. LW: Surely this disguise would fall apart as soon as someone said Ni Hao? It wouldn’t work at all! NL: Well he hired a servant, who presumably did the talking for him. So he sticks on his pigtail, crosses the border unnoticed and in the mountains he’s exploring, looking for this tea, and finds that it’s growing in a monastery. LW: How did he know what he was looking for? NL: I think people had previously sent stories, or pictures, or mythical tales, if you will, of how wonderful this tea was, but when he managed to get it back and take some of the plants elsewhere he found that in fact because of the soil conditions and other factors it can’t actually grow anywhere else except in this particular place. LW: In this particular region of China? This is the only place where it grows? Old Robert Fortune … NL: Not so fortunate after all. LW: How disappointed must Mrs. Fortune have been! Her husband has been away for two years, all of a sudden he comes back with tea that no one can grow? NL: He came back [to China] and stayed for a long time in the temple underneath where the dahongpao tea grows and he wanted to learn from the tea masters of the monastery how to grow this tea so that he could take the knowledge back with him. It seems that despite all the knowledge and wisdom that they could impart he never managed to export this tea elsewhere which is why it’s so expensive today. LW: Have you ever tried the tea? Or come across it, at least? Yoyo: I think I came across it long ago but I’ve forgotten the flavor. LW: It’s not worth ten thousand dollars, then! Yoyo: I think it must have been very good because it is very expensive. LW: No. That doesn’t mean that it’s necessarily very good, it just means that it’s very rare. If this tea was growing everywhere else maybe it wouldn’t be as expensive. Yoyo: Back in 2002, a very wealthy buyer paid 180,000 yuan, almost 28000 US dollars, for just 20g of Chinese dahongpao tea. LW: When do you drink that? You can’t just break that out for breakfast! NL: That is a very special occasion.