Yangloudong Ancient Town

Yangloudong Ancient Town was one of the six ancient towns in Puyi (now Chibi City) during the Ming and Qing Dynasties, and is the original place of 'Songfeng Tea', known as the 'hometown of brick tea'. Yangloudong Ancient Town plays a very important role in the development history of China's tea industry. Three hundred years ago, countries along the tea route took Yangloudong as their understanding of Chinese tea. This land, which is less than 0.7 square kilometers, has gathered merchants from various countries such as Russia, Germany, England, Japan, etc., forming a 'China Big Tea Market' with a population of over 40,000. The town has an ancient street mainly composed of Ming and Qing buildings, with a width of 4 meters and a length of 2200 meters, accompanied by several T-shaped alleys. The area of the ancient street buildings is 0.7 square kilometers. The street is paved with bluestone. The 'Chicken Public Car' that transported tea in the past has ground the slabs into grooves more than an inch deep. Following the clues of tea, you will find the history of prosperity or decline in many places. Through the fog of time, among those complicated factors, what you finally find is how tea is quietly changing people's lives. Yangloudong, a small town in Puyi County that is completely unfamiliar to many people and embraced by the mountains, is now as quiet as an ancient well. The stone streets of the Ming and Qing Dynasties; the distant green mountains, faintly visible like light smoke; the country roads, the old walls. The houses are old, the pedestrians are scarce, and on the narrow streets, there are only old people sitting idle and children playing. The stream formed by the flowing of Jiuyanquan can only bring a little convenience to the women who wash clothes. Only the stone slab road on the old street that has been worn away all the corners, and the deep grooves ground out by the single-wheel cart on the stone slab road, are still silently telling the glory of Yangloudong in the past. Remember the past of Yangloudong, there is such an old man, in his inherited memory of his ancestors, there has been a history of several hundred years here. Around 1736, the first piece of green brick tea made by Mr. Lei Zhongwan, the owner of Yangloudong Tea House, was born here. The green brick tea made with the water of Jiuyanquan soon became famous, so it was called Dongzhuan by people. Since then, hundreds of thousands of tea bricks every year have been transported by local or Jiangxi sturdy farmers with creaking single-wheel carts, day and night, to Xindian thirty miles away, and then to Hankou, Baotou and Zhangjiakou, all the way to distant Russia.