Qi Guowei frying tea.
Yesterday, Qi Yingjie, chairman of Hangzhou West Lake Longjing Tea Co., Ltd., announced in his WeChat Moments that his father Qi Guowei passed away at 9:02 p.m. on September 16 at his home in Longjing Village, at the age of 76.
As the old village head of Longjing Village in Xihu District, Qi Guowei devoted his whole life to West Lake Longjing and was its faithful defender. He was honored with awards such as the “Jue Nong Medal Award” and “Master Chinese Tea Craftsman.” In 2016, this newspaper published a feature in its “Tea Industry Craftsmen” column titled “Qi Guowei: Defender of West Lake Longjing.” Today we republish that article in memory of Mr. Qi; may he still be accompanied by tea in heaven.
Qi Guowei: Defender of West Lake Longjing
Whether or not you are involved with tea, when people talk about famous Chinese teas, the first name that almost always springs to their lips is West Lake Longjing; whether or not you live in Hangzhou, if asked to name what the city is known for, West Lake Longjing will surely be among the answers. West Lake Longjing has long ceased to be simply a tea. If you compare it to a teapot, then what steeps inside it is the whole city of Hangzhou.
At the foot of Shifeng Mountain in Longjing Village, in the West Lake scenic area of Hangzhou, there is a man with countless ties to West Lake Longjing: Qi Guowei. He is the chairman of Hangzhou West Lake Longjing Tea Co., Ltd., and some even call him “the guardian of West Lake Longjing.”
Premier Zhou’s Entrustment Planted a Tea Seed in His Heart
Qi Guowei is a native Hangzhouan; his home is in Longjing Village within the West Lake scenic area. He recalled that Longjing Village had several major family names, and the Qi clan was one of them. Legend has it that the Qi family’s ancestor was Qi Jiguang, the great Ming dynasty general, who traveled between Shandong and Zhejiang fighting Japanese pirates; later some of the clan settled in Hangzhou and remained in Longjing Village. The Qi descendants planted tea bushes near Longjing Village, harvesting them every spring and making them into “Sparrow’s Tongue” and “Flag and Spear” teas, whose taste won wide acclaim.<\/p>\n
Tea bushes on the hillsides blend into the houses.
Qi Guowei said that in his childhood, several big families in the village each had their own ancestral hall. The Qi ancestral hall covered more than 300 square meters, but it had long been taken over by the collective and converted into a tea processing factory. Born into a tea family, Qi Guowei knew everything about tea from an early age; his own life was fused with tea. Tea, the plant he saw and heard about every day, was to Qi Guowei like breathing \u2014 something he practiced constantly yet was seldom conscious of.
Then, in 1962, everything changed. One day in April that year, Premier Zhou Enlai accompanied Cambodian Prince Sihanouk on an inspection tour of Meijiawu in Hangzhou, and Qi Guowei, as a representative of the tea farmers, presented flowers to the Premier. The 15-year-old Qi was then studying at the village’s West Lake Tea Secondary School, a tea-specialty school divided into two parts: cultural classes and tea studies. Later, when Premier Zhou visited the school, he ran into Qi Guowei again and greeted him warmly. The Premier greatly approved of the school’s curriculum, in which specialized knowledge and cultural courses went hand in hand, and as he left he entrusted Qi with these words: “You must make Longjing tea well.” Qi Guowei recalled the Premier patting his head, his eyes kind yet resolute, and how those words lingered in his mind for a long time, quietly taking root without his knowing when.
Later, at 18, Qi Guowei began working as a work-point recorder at the Longjing Village tea farm, growing steadily along the path of tea making, until he eventually founded Hangzhou West Lake Longjing Tea Co., Ltd. The three characters of “Qi Guowei” gradually merged into one with “West Lake Longjing.”
Inheriting a Famous Tea Begins with Refining the Craft
“Learning tea is hard work.” This heartfelt remark of Qi Guowei’s is a sentiment shared by all tea makers. Frying from 7 in the morning until midnight, sometimes continuing until dawn \u2014 all to finish frying that day’s freshly picked leaves. On Qi Guowei’s hands, the marks left by scalds and blisters remain, bearing witness to countless days and nights when his two hands kept tossing the leaves in the wok without pause, the scorching wok walls hissing with steam through the fresh tea, smoke stinging his half-open eyes and drawing streams of sweat from his forehead. And those tea-frying hands, after blistering and peeling, were left with callus after callus. Tea, hands, wok, and the ceaselessly turning days and nights \u2014 these were the most common sights in the days before Longjing tea went to market.
Learning to fry tea is a long process. After the leaves are picked, they are spread out to wither in the shade, then fixed, then re-fried. The fixation step is called “qing guo,” and the re-frying step is “hui guo.” Qi Guowei said that in learning West Lake Longjing frying, there is a saying \u2014 “three years for qing guo, five years for hui guo” \u2014 meaning it takes at least three years to master fixation and five years to fully grasp re-frying. Qi Guowei’s West Lake Longjing frying technique was passed down through generations of the Qi family. Yet the method did change somewhat by the time it reached him. He said: “The West Lake Longjing fried in the old days was by no means as flat and smooth in appearance as it is today; that is mainly thanks to techniques continually improving through refinement.”<\/p>\n
In 2017, the all-media team of China Cooperation Times · Tea Weekly organized the “Chinese Tea People Study Tour,” and Qi Guowei personally taught the participants.
There is now a phenomenon: whether Longjing tea or other tea types, much is machine-fried, and purely handmade products account for only a small share. Mechanization raises efficiency, but in terms of taste and quality, the handmade method is still superior. “This requires each of our generations to preserve the good things and let them carry on \u2014 what is called ‘inheritance.'” Situated in the core production area of West Lake Longjing, this unique advantage made Qi Guowei deeply aware that his destiny was tightly bound to this tea, and so the burden of inheriting West Lake Longjing weighed especially heavy on his shoulders. Soil, cultivar, climate… every link related to tea matters, and the frying craft is the key among keys.
Why, when people praise a good tea, do they emphasize the word “craftsmanship” rather than “degree of mechanization”? Because human beings are involved. Where there are people, there is heart; tea made with heart contains feeling, and the result is bound to differ greatly from what cold machinery produces. Moreover, leaves fried by hand better express the character of the local tea \u2014 something machines cannot replace. “Shi, Long, Yun, Hu, Mei” (Lion, Dragon, Cloud, Tiger, Plum) are the recognized time-honored cultural symbols and origin labels of Longjing tea culture, but the tea produced in each place differs with the terroir, so the making techniques must be treated differently. It can be said that a tea master’s skill directly affects the quality of the final product. If everything were mechanized, I fear these old names would lose their stylistic differences.
Yet Qi Guowei was not opposed to mechanization either. He preferred that tradition and modernity both be taken into account: tea going to the mass market, to meet the demand for volume, could be machine-produced; but for top-grade West Lake Longjing, the advantages of exquisite handcraft must still be brought into play. It was precisely his long-accumulated tea-making experience that gave Qi Guowei his “fiery eyes.” As president of the Hangzhou West Lake Longjing Tea Chamber of Commerce, he contributed many suggestions to the formulation of several West Lake Longjing standards. Thus, every spring when tea picking and processing began, the West Lake Longjing teas from several tea villages \u2014 Weng, Long, Man and Yang \u2014 all had to pass Qi Guowei’s quality check, and he could often tell a tea’s quality by sight alone.
Cultivating Within, Protecting Without \u2014 Guarding the Purest West Lake Longjing
When it comes to innovation in tea making, one figure who must be mentioned is Jiang Hua, former Party Secretary of Zhejiang Province. During Qi Guowei’s tea-making years, Secretary Jiang Hua once came to inspect the company and noticed that the woks for frying tea were heated with firewood \u2014 which not only wasted timber but also harmed the environment. He therefore proposed replacing them with electric woks and set up a research task group. Qi Guowei especially pointed out that stoking the fire was itself a demanding skill: if the heat was too strong, the tea in the wok would scorch; if insufficient, the tea would remain half-finished. In a sense, it was even more critical than the frying itself. For generations, the degree of firing had been controlled by hand; with electric woks, could that heat really be managed? With such doubts, many practitioners threw themselves into the project’s R&D. Around 1965, the task group finally developed an electric wok suitable for tea frying and popularized it in Longjing Township, ultimately replacing wood firing successfully. Developed to this day, these electric woks can automatically adjust their heat, saving part of the labor input in tea frying.
In addition, attitudes also changed. Qi Guowei said: “Don’t think everyone has always known that green tea is picked and made only in spring. Back in the earliest planned-economy days, everyone chased volume and made tea in spring, summer and autumn alike. Now the market has begun to chase quality, and products place more emphasis on brand building.” Food safety is a big topic for ordinary people, and every link of tea production management began to be deliberately controlled and secured. The tea-frying skill that used to be essential for every tea worker is now something few young people are willing to learn, because it is indeed bitter, hard work; yet most masters who possess the handmade craft are already nearing fifty, which left Qi Guowei deeply worried about the inheritance of West Lake Longjing’s craftsmanship.
To ensure the making techniques of West Lake Longjing tea are passed down reliably, Qi Guowei donated a sum of money every year to support the government-organized tea-frying competitions \u2014 first, to encourage young people to learn tea, letting young blood flow into this unique craft so it may flourish for generations; second, to widen the price gap between machine-made and hand-fried tea, protecting the hand-frying craft, for hand frying is truly no easy feat. Every year during the spring tea season, Qi Guowei also set up the West Lake Longjing Shifeng Mountain Tea-Frying Center, providing frying equipment free of charge and giving priority to purchasing tea leaves fried at the center.<\/p>\n
At the West Lake Longjing Shifeng Mountain Tea-Frying Center, Qi Guowei set up frying woks so tea farmers could fry on site.
All of this was to protect West Lake Longjing tea. As the saying goes, a tall tree catches the wind. The fame of West Lake Longjing attracted a host of imitators on the market: some merchants sold all kinds of flat green teas as Longjing tea, tacking the word “Longjing” onto every category of tea. Genuine and fake Longjing differ from cultivar to production process, with costs alone differing by several hundred yuan per jin. But laypeople cannot tell them apart, and ordinary buyers naturally pick the cheaper option \u2014 which drags the authentic West Lake Longjing down with it.
What is pure West Lake Longjing? Qi Guowei told reporters that as early as the 1980s, the Ministry of Agriculture of the State Council had granted Xihu Township of Hangzhou, Zhejiang, the title “Hometown of West Lake Longjing,” because West Lake Longjing’s origin was initially defined only within Xihu Township and only later expanded to outlying areas. Later, with reform and opening-up and the market gradually coming alive, the Longjing tea family grew: beyond West Lake Longjing, surrounding counties successively developed Dafo Longjing, Yuezhou Longjing and others. The above are state-recognized, market-regulated Longjing teas; anything beyond them is “fake Longjing.” If left unchecked, this precious famous tea might well vanish into a chaotic market.
In December 1998, Qi Guowei joined an “origin of production” study tour organized by the Ministry of Agriculture to inspect the wines of Bordeaux, France. “Bordeaux wine’s concept of origin has five elements \u2014 a long historical heritage, unique geographical features, traditional processing techniques, modern management methods and scientific testing technology. This is very close to West Lake Longjing tea.” Upon returning home, Qi Guowei immediately drafted a proposal calling for origin protection for West Lake Longjing.
Fortunately, thanks to the efforts of people from many sides, regulations such as the “Regulations on the Protection of the Place of Origin of Longjing Tea” and the “Hangzhou West Lake Longjing Tea Base Protection Regulations” were issued. The West Lake Longjing production area lies mainly within the West Lake scenic area and parts of Xihu District, totaling 168 square kilometers, and is divided into a first-level protection zone and a second-level protection zone. The old-name tea bushes of “Shi, Long, Yun, Hu, Mei,” all “a hundred years old,” belong to the former; the parts incorporated after reform and opening-up belong to the latter. Teas from other producing areas within Zhejiang Province are named after their respective areas and collectively called Longjing tea. This effectively protected West Lake Longjing’s iconic place of origin and promoted the healthy and positive development of the whole Longjing tea market.
Both a Master and a Tea Farmer \u2014 the World Is the Cup Before Him
Standing in the Qi family tea garden in Longjing Village at the foot of Shifeng Mountain \u2014 layer upon layer of emerald tea bushes, a sky woven of blue and white, houses scattered in pleasing order, the fragrance of tea all around \u2014 the four characters “picturesque as poetry” fit this scene best. Gazing at the more than 7,000 mu of tea forest stretching over the hills, Qi Guowei said softly: “We are not the inventors of West Lake Longjing, but its inheritors, and we have a responsibility to protect it well.”
When people in the industry speak of Qi Guowei, their appraisals mostly revolve around two points: he is a tea-making master of West Lake Longjing tea and the undisputed, capable president of the West Lake Longjing Tea Chamber of Commerce; and the “Gong” brand West Lake Longjing tea he founded is the designated provider of state gift tea \u2014 an honor of thirty years that has not only blessed his company but is also the pride of West Lake Longjing tea itself. Indeed, Qi Guowei successively received honorary titles such as “Outstanding Entrepreneur of China’s Specialty Hometowns,” “Outstanding Private Entrepreneur of Zhejiang Province,” “2005 China Tea Industry Economic Figure” and “Hangzhou’s Best Rural Practical Talent.” In 1989, the West Lake Longjing tea he fried was recognized by experts as the authentic frying method for West Lake Longjing tea. In 2013, Zhejiang Province also established the “Qi Guowei West Lake Longjing Tea Hand-Frying Skills Master Studio,” named after him.
Of outside appraisals, Qi Guowei said lightly: “I am simply a tea server.” He took a sip of tea, set down his glass, and continued: “Tea is the tea among the ‘seven necessities for opening the door’; nowadays more people place tea among ‘qin, chess, calligraphy, painting, poetry, wine and tea.’ Nothing wrong with that \u2014 tea itself can be both refined and popular. But since we mean to inherit tea, we must understand that a path rooted in the masses is the most suitable path. The same logic applies to titles. Learn to make good tea, make tea well \u2014 isn’t that simply what a person who lives by tea ought to do? Whatever the commendation, it is the return gift for treating tea with true sincerity. To be crowned with grand titles for doing what one should do \u2014 I actually feel unworthy of it. What I do is make tea and sell tea, doing my best to cherish West Lake Longjing, this name card of Chinese tea. I am no different from a tea farmer.”
Interestingly, although Qi Guowei was among the “top elite” of the tea world, when tasting tea he was nothing like the so-called “experts” of one’s imagination, who seemingly cannot take a sip without putting on a proper show; instead, he used the simplest of glasses, and the tea he drank was broken leaves and fannings. He frankly said that whether one sips delicately like a literatus or drinks heartily in big gulps, as long as body and mind are refreshed and the mood is pleasant and healthy, drinking tea should simply follow one’s heart and nature.<\/p>\n
Qi Guowei (left) instructs his son Qi Yingjie in tea making.
A profound historical heritage, unique natural conditions, traditional tea cultivars and consummate making techniques \u2014 these four points sum up why West Lake Longjing is so famous. Emperors and ministers, gifted scholars and fair ladies, townsfolk and common folk alike have made it an inexhaustible topic of conversation. No wonder people today still deliberately protect the eighteen tea bushes personally designated by the Qianlong Emperor, which now reside in the Zhejiang West Lake Old Longjing Imperial Tea Garden that Qi Guowei helped build. Though these tea bushes have weathered great changes, they remain full of vitality, their shimmering leaves holding the glories of bygone days; echoing them from afar, the new tea gardens on the distant hills sway with today’s vigor and spirit.
A few years ago, Qi Guowei’s son Qi Yingjie also joined the company, mainly in charge of marketing and e-commerce; yet, though not formally trained in tea, he has never forgotten to seek his father’s guidance in tea-making skills. Teaching by word and example, passing down through the generations \u2014 this is exactly what Qi Guowei hoped for.
(This article was published on page B8 of the August 17, 2016 issue of China Cooperation Times · Tea Weekly; photos produced by: China Cooperation Times · Tea Weekly All-Media)<\/p>\n
—
\nAuthor: Lam Sam (LamSam), the Old Tea Head
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Qi Guowei frying tea.Yesterday, Qi Yingjie, chairman of Hangzhou West Lake Longjing Tea Co., Ltd., announced in his WeChat Moments that his father Qi Guowei passed away at 9:02 p.m. on September 16 at his home in Longjing Village, at the age of 76.As the old village head of Longjing Village in Xihu District, Qi […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13634,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_members_access_role":[],"_members_access_error":""},"categories":[95],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13633","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-yun-tea-mountains-en"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zentea-shop.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13633","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/zentea-shop.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/zentea-shop.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zentea-shop.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zentea-shop.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13633"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/zentea-shop.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13633\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13635,"href":"https:\/\/zentea-shop.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13633\/revisions\/13635"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zentea-shop.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13634"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zentea-shop.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13633"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zentea-shop.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13633"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zentea-shop.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13633"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}