Yunnan Coffee Culture creates "Zhu Kula Ancient Coffee"

The oldest coffee tree in China grows in Zhu Kula Village, Pingchuan Town, in the Yubao River Canyon in Binchuan County, Dali Bai Autonomous Prefecture.

When I came to a small hill by the Yupao River, I saw a small mountain village surrounded by a green coffee forest. This is Zhu Kula, who is regarded as a paradise on earth. Compared with the rapid changes in the outside world, the century-old house with green tiles and white walls in the village remains the same except for the mottled traces, and time seems to stay here.

In 1892, in the 18th year of Guang Xu of the Qing Dynasty, a French missionary left the legend of Chinese coffee here.

Arabica coffee grown by French missionaries

At the end of the 19th century, Western missionaries had a very difficult time in China. Due to the surging revolutionary movements in China and the conflicts of different religious beliefs, as well as because some missionaries are afraid to oppress the common people, "church plans" emerge one after another all over the country. At this time, Tian Deneng, a French Catholic missionary, was sent from the Paris diocese to Binchuan, Dali, Yunnan, for which he came up with the Chinese name. Compared with missionaries in some other places, Tian Deneng, who preached in the city of Binchuan, was lucky.

During this period, Zhang Yiqing, a bully in Yupaojiang area of Binchuan, did everything evil, seizing land and bullying men and women, resulting in great public indignation. Yi Qi Ganwen and others asked Tian Deneng to help with the lawsuit and won the case. As a result, Tian Deneng decided to stay in Zhukula Village, a tributary of the Jinsha River, in the Yupao River Grand Canyon for missionary activities, and built a church with local architectural style, which still stands in the center of the village.

Perhaps it is the coffee hobby peculiar to the French, or it shows the confidence and determination of Zhu Kula. Tian Deneng brought coffee seeds from Vietnam and planted them near the church. As the saying goes, "if you plant flowers but do not blossom, you will not think of Tian Deneng. Today, more than a hundred years later, his missionary career has long been aborted, but he has unexpectedly become the first person in China to introduce coffee." Coffee beans such as Arabica, which he planted, have also become valuable coffee germplasm resources.

The villagers of Zhukula have special feelings for coffee trees, and even when the coffee beans did not bring them any economic benefits, the villagers did not cut down a coffee tree. Up to now, Zhu Kula still has 13 mu of 1134 of the oldest coffee trees in China, with an annual output of about 150kg. Among them, 24 trees are over 100 years old. Unfortunately, the coffee tree planted by Father Tian himself was frozen to death in a heavy snow in 1984.

Father Tian stayed in Zhukula for more than 10 years. Later, because of his meritorious service and domineering, he was opposed by the people and had to return home sadly. Today, the church he built has long been empty, like silently telling the vicissitudes of this small mountain village for a hundred years.

Isolated "Paradise on Earth"

"Zhu Kula" is originally in Yi language, which means a winding mountain road. After Father Tian preached in this place, some people interpreted Zhu Kula as "heaven on earth".

Historically, there are two mountain roads entering Zhukula, one is the West Road, which takes a day or two from Pingchuan Town, Binchuan County, and the other is the East Road, which crosses the Yubao River westward from Shiyang Town, Dayao County. Both roads are difficult to walk, and people call it "99 bends and 88 ridges". The local leader told me that in the past, because the road was so narrow and dangerous that the pigs bought by the masses from outside the mountain were raised, they could no longer drive out of the mountain to sell. The locals also told such a humorous old story: at the beginning of the Cultural Revolution, a recent college graduate was assigned to work in this area. As the road became more and more dangerous, he finally dared not go any further. So he wrote on the cliff, "the revolution ends here!" In a few words, I resigned and went home.

To this day, I still feel the difficulty of walking. The road from Pingchuan Town to Zhukula Village is extremely difficult, especially along the Yupao River, which is basically a simple passage carved from the cliff, and the road surface can only accommodate the width of the wheelbase of the trolley. There is an abyss on one side of the road and a precipice on the other. Some bends must be reversed before they can turn around. Strictly speaking, they cannot be called highways, and they are basically no different from the plank road. Such a channel was only built by Datang Company in 2010 for the construction of Yupaojiang Power Station. When the road was being built, two excavators rolled off the cliff, but fortunately, the driver jumped out of the car and escaped unscathed, which is a miracle. When it comes to Zhukula, I am fully convinced that these stories are not jokes and confirm the historical reason why Zhukula Coffee was preserved-in the past, Zhukula was almost isolated from the world because of inconvenient transportation. Perhaps it is because of its closure that a variety of troubles in history have been avoided and these century-old coffee trees have been preserved.

Create "Zhu Kula Century Ancient Coffee"

We went to the village to see Li Fusheng, an 85-year-old Yi man. The old man speaks Chinese very well, but because he can't hear clearly, he needs his family to act as an interpreter for us. He said: before the founding of New China, most of the villagers of Zhu Kula believed in Catholicism. Priests spoke Yi dialect and usually read the Bible in French and then translated it into Yi dialect for us to listen to. Li Fusheng said that since he can remember, he has experienced two priests, the latter of whom is also French. The Chinese name is Duan Guozhang, who left after the founding of the people's Republic of China. Speaking of which, the old man also sang us a hymn. After the founding of New China, Li Fusheng served as a militia leader, joined the party, and served as a production leader for decades, leading everyone to grow coffee. In the past, under the practice of unified purchase and marketing, all the coffee beans they planted were handed over to supply and marketing cooperatives.

Qi Fenghua is the current general party branch secretary of Zhukula Village. He is 53 years old and has served in the Zhukula Village Committee since 1993. He told me that there are 84 households and 337 people in Zhukula village, with only two surnames "Qi" and "Li", all of which are basically Yi people. The income of the villagers mainly depends on growing coffee and walnuts, with a per capita net income of 1200 yuan and living in poverty. Coffee prices have risen in recent years, and they have protected and developed coffee as a key industry in accordance with the requirements of the county government, and the county finance has allocated 100000 yuan of support funds every year to build the brand of "Zhukula Centennial Coffee." It is a pity that the brand "Zhukula Coffee" has been ransacked. Qi Fenghua is full of confidence in leading the masses to increase their income and become rich. they actively cooperate with the leading enterprises in China's coffee industry and plan to develop 1000 mu of coffee. He said that the income of villagers' coffee and coffee seedlings will increase greatly this year.

On the edge of the village, the villagers are ordering coffee. In pairs, one of them plucked the soil with a hoe, and the other sowed coffee seeds in the field, and then covered it with soil. In addition to being planted in this village, the coffee seedlings are also sold to Dayao County across the river.

After a hundred years of edification, drinking coffee has long become a living habit of the local minority people in Zhukula village. Qi Fenghua told me that men, women and children in the village drink coffee, iron pot and stone mill, stir-fry and grind themselves. However, the coffee processing process is kept secret, no wife, no daughter. He invited us to his house, and with his permission, I went into the kitchen to watch him make coffee. But when I saw him pour the ground coffee and the ingredients from several bottles and cans into a big aluminum teapot, put it on a biogas stove and slowly boil it, then pour it on each of us with a paper cup, and we all drink happily together. The fragrant coffee is absolutely enjoyable. Here, like villagers drinking tea in other places, drinking coffee has nothing to do with the so-called "taste" and "sentiment". The unique and rich original coffee culture is amazing.

Zheng Shulin, the teacher of Zhukula Village Primary School, is from Sichuan. At that time, she followed her ex-military boyfriend into Zhukula. Exhausted, she did not have the courage and strength to walk out of this deep canyon again. Of course, she was also moved by the simplicity of the Zhukula people. So she stayed and became a private teacher of "one division, one school". For 29 years, she offered silently. Now there are 16 students in the first to third grades of the school. When I entered the classroom, I saw that there was a blackboard at both ends of the classroom. The first and second graders facing the south were listening to Mr. Zheng, while the third graders facing the north were doing their homework. At present, the residential building for primary school students in the village 8 kilometers away is nearing completion, so that children can receive formal education.

These children are the future of Zhu Kula.