The hundred-year memory of Yunnan Coffee Zhu Kula

Reporter_Qin Wang Intern Reporter_Zeng Lu

In Binchuan County, Dali City, Yunnan Province, there is a hidden small mountain village. The whole village is shaded by green trees. Approaching the village, you will find that these green trees are almost all coffee trees. Through the coffee forest surrounded by layers, you can enter the village. Coffee trees are planted in front of and behind every house in the village.

This village is called Zhukula, where coffee trees first appeared on Chinese soil.

French origin

In 1904, the French Catholic missionary Tian Deneng received an arrangement from the church's Dali diocese that he would take another French priest Lu Hongru and a Chinese servant Deng Peigen to the Binchuan area under Dali's jurisdiction to preach the will of the Lord. Tian Deneng and Lu Hongru are both Chinese names they took.

Among the items they carried with them, in addition to the Bible, personal clothing, some production tools and medicines, there were coffee beans and coffee seedlings purchased when passing through Vietnam-because Tian De Neng loved coffee. Although the French had grown coffee in Vietnam and Laos since the early 19th century, missionaries in Dali, China, often lacked fresh coffee because of poor transportation.

With faith in bringing the gospel of God to the most distant places, and perhaps the idea of finding suitable coffee growing places, the three crawled among the mountains of Binchuan.

Tian Deneng and the other two, whose legs were wrapped in mud, walked more than 100 kilometers to a small mountain depression beside the Yupao River and saw a small mountain village built along the mountain. The whole village is shaded by green trees. In front of the village are green terraces of different shades. From afar, you can see clouds hanging in the sky.

The priest decided to stay and preach in this paradise. He built a church with blue tiles and white walls outside the village according to the appearance of the houses here. The coffee seedlings he had brought with him were planted outside the church, and he did not know that the ancestors of these coffee seedlings could be traced back to the coffee seedlings given to King Louis XIV of France by Dutch coffee merchants in 1715.

After the coffee seedlings with the "noble" lineage came to Yunnan, they felt like finding their hometown. They immediately adapted to the altitude, soil, temperature and precipitation of the red plateau and slowly bred into a coffee forest. And Father Tian's missionary career is also gradually getting better.

At that time, the fish bubble river area Dongsheng "Shun Jiang Wang" Zhang Yiqing domineering, forcibly occupied land and population, great public anger. Yi Qi Ganwen and others asked Tian Deneng to help with the lawsuit. As a reward, Tian Deneng obtained a lot of land property after winning the lawsuit, and Catholics soon grew to hundreds of people.

In addition to preaching, Tian Deneng is also carefully cultivating these coffee trees. In addition to drinking coffee for themselves, they also provide coffee for the Catholic Church in Dali. However, the good times did not last long. Four years later, there was a religious case in Binchuan, and Father Tian was forced to leave Zhu Ku La.

Past events in Yunnan

In the Republic of China period, the Catholic Church still sent Father Xu, Father Gu and Father Duan to Binchuan. These missionaries taught the villagers to read the Bible, set up a church primary school and brought basketball. The missionaries, though different, loved coffee, and they continued to grow and expand the coffee tree's territory.

But Zhukula's coffee is only for priests to drink, and local villagers, they like coffee with priests, until today, this remote southwest China countryside, home for guests to drink, is still coffee, they will cook in their own large iron pot roast, then grind coffee powder on the grinding stone mill, finally like Turkish coffee, wrapped in gauze in the teapot boil.

Zhugula's Yi name is "Ruokelai", perhaps its pronunciation is very similar to French (CHocolat, chocolate), Tian De can give it a French village name. China's first coffee, planted by two cultures inadvertently meeting, is just a small detail of China's pull into the world system in the turbulent 20th century.

This is how isolated villages become associated with coffee. The outside world, the coffee memories of Yunnan cities, is written in another way.

Just a year after Tian Deneng planted coffee, his French countrymen opened Yunnan's first coffee bar in Mengzi. In 1887, after the end of the Sino-French War, the Qing government signed a contract with France and was forced to open Yunnan Mengzi as a treaty port. This was Yunnan's earliest treaty port and soon attracted foreign businessmen. Foreign companies from France, Britain, the United States, Japan, Italy, Germany and Greece landed here one after another, even including the famous American Mobil Company, British American Tobacco Company and Paris Department Store at that time.

Many imported products have also come along, such as coffee, which is the favorite drink of "foreign old mi"(Mongolian dialect for calling foreigners). The "Dian-Yue Railway Bar" located at the Dian-Yue Railway Station was the product of this time.

Although it is called a bar, it actually sells coffee, a practice that comes from France, where cafes are characterized by a mixture of cafes and bistros. To this day, Kunming, Lijiang, Dali and other places many foreigners open cafes are still selling coffee during the day, at night become backpackers gather to drink beer places.

This is only the beginning of the future popularity of Mengzi coffee. In 1938, when the Sino-Japanese War broke out, Peking University, Tsinghua University and Nankai University formed the famous National Southwest United University and moved south to Kunming. Due to the shortage of school buildings, the liberal arts college and law school were moved to Mengzi. At that time, Wen Yiduo, Chen Yinke, Chen Daisun, Qian Mu, Wu Mi, Zheng Tianting and other famous scholars all lived in the Gelushi Hotel on the south lake side of Mengzi. This is a French building with yellow walls and white tiles and large shutters.

The "South American Cafe" opened by Vietnamese expatriates here is one of the favorite cafes visited by students of the United Nations General Assembly. It is said that a Vietnamese girl played the single-string zither here in those years, which attracted many admirers. Some people wrote a poem for her: "The old country mourns, the southern border is lazy to make up, the eyebrows are condensed and tears turn nine ileums, the worries are facing the world, and there is no words to say vicissitudes." Worried single-stringed zither, fragrant coffee smell, talented inscription, is the portrayal of the depression and tranquility of Yunnan in the rear area.

At that time, Kunming, there is also a legendary Vietnamese cafe, located in the old Kunming Jinbi Road Jinma Biji Fang area of the "New Yue Western Restaurant"(later renamed "Nanlai Sheng"). The boss is a beautiful single Vietnamese woman named Nguyen Min Xuan, who is said to be a prominent family in Taiyuan, Vietnam. Freshly ground coffee is the signature here. Coffee beans come from Vietnam, and perhaps some Arabica coffee native to Yunnan. Because of the authentic taste, patriotic overseas Chinese Chen Jiageng was a frequent visitor here. Shen Congwen entertained Hu Shi here, Zhou Enlai also drank coffee here, thinking that the taste was similar to that when he studied in France in his youth.

In his cafe, Nguyen Min Xuan also met his compatriot Ho Chi Minh, the future general secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam. In 1940, Ho Chi Minh entered Kunming and, together with Pham Van Dong and Vu Nguyen Giap, established the Vietnamese Overseas Department. At that time, Ho Chi Minh's public identity was the baker of "Xin Yue".

In the chaotic years, a weak woman dared to direct this kind of movie plot, which was legendary. The coffee she brewed and her story also made the old Kunming people sigh, and until the 1980s, it was still full of customers. In the morning, Kunming people wear slippers early in the morning, yawning to drink coffee here, they are not the old people who formed habits in the Republic of China, or returned overseas Chinese.

In 2009, with the transformation of the city, this legendary old shop completely disappeared from Kunming people's sight.

go to the World

In 1949, when the People's Republic of China was founded, the villagers of Zhukula were still growing coffee and drinking coffee. At that time, a catty of coffee could be exchanged for two catties of salt, so village chief Li Fusheng mobilized villagers to plant coffee in large areas, with coffee trees up to 60 mu at most.

However, except for salt exchange and supply to Binchuan Taihe Farm, Zhukula is no longer known to outsiders. Even today, when Yunnan began to grow coffee in large areas, people still forgot Zhukula.

In the 1950s, Liang Jinshan, a patriotic overseas Chinese, returned home hoping to promote coffee cultivation. He also introduced new coffee seedlings from South Asia. Liang first went to Myanmar to do business. At the age of 23, he set up a silver factory in a joint venture with the British colonial government authorities. He was honored by the Queen of England and specially summoned to London. He was given a revolver, two shotguns and a silver knife.

During the War of Resistance Against Japan, this legendary businessman also contributed many times to the fight of the national army. It was with his financial support that Yunnan technicians cultivated high-yield Lujiangba Arabica coffee. He also sent his coffee samples to his old friend He Xiangning, who replied after receiving them: "The coffee tastes excellent. Thank you very much for your hospitality."

At that time, Lujiangba had produced 210,000 kilograms of coffee beans. In the mid-1950s, Yunnan coffee cultivation area once reached 4000 hectares. Unfortunately, after the 1960s, Sino-Soviet relations broke down and 4000 mu of coffee plantations were artificially abandoned or replanted with other crops.

Until the end of the Cultural Revolution, coffee trees could only be seen on the roadside of the Burma Road or in the courtyard of farmers in Yunnan. Due to geographical reasons, 24 coffee trees planted by Father Tian have been preserved in the remote village of Zhugula.

These coffee saplings have been sleeping quietly, waiting for someone to wake them up. This task fell to Bauder, the first agronomist Nestle sent to train farmers in Pu 'er. In 1988, in order to reduce the impact of coffee planting bases in South America on coffee prices, Nestle shifted its attention from Brazil, the world's largest coffee grower, to Pu 'er, the same latitude as Cuba, the home of coffee.

However, unlike the farmers in Binchuan, Dali, or Dehong, some of their ancestors had dealt with coffee. To get farmers to grow coffee, Bauder often starts with what coffee is.

However, he planted the first coffee tree in Meizijian River and Hongxingba of Xiaohejiang River in Ning 'er County. A total of 70 mu coffee experimental field also died due to lack of management experience and improper fertilization. It was not until 1990 that the coffee in Ning 'er County reached the standard stipulated by Nestle headquarters. Some people say that Nestle's experts succeeded by extracting the excellent genes of its Bobang and Tiepika from the old saplings of Zhugula Village.

However, Pu 'er farmers who drank tea since ancient times still did not like to grow this thing they did not drink because they felt that it had no economic value. So Nestle signed a 14-year agreement with the local government, in which it promised to buy coffee at the price of the US spot market as a guarantee for farmers 'interests, with no ceiling and a minimum purchase price.

Stimulated by multinational groups, Yunnan coffee planting finally revived. By the end of 1997, Yunnan coffee planting area had reached 7800 hectares, accounting for 83% of the country's output. In the same year, Beijing's Carving Time Cafe officially opened, China's urban middle class gradually emerged, coffee became a new way of life for urban white-collar workers. More multinational groups, including Maxwell and Starbucks, have also come to Yunnan. During this period, China's economy developed rapidly and gradually integrated into the global economic system. The small Yunnan coffee beans are witnesses.

Now that 100 years have passed, Tian De Neng probably did not expect that his missionary career was interrupted by history, but the coffee he brought survived with time.

China Coffee Trading Network: www.gafei.com