Guangdong's herbal tea has a long history, rich varieties and diverse forms. Famous herbal teas include Deng Lao herbal tea, Wang Lao Ji herbal tea, Qingxintang herbal tea and other healthy herbal teas; In addition, there are Shi Qi Herbal Tea, Sanhutang Herbal Tea, Guiling Ointment, Sashimi Soup, etc. It is also a traditional old-fashioned herbal tea deeply loved by Cantonese people.
The earliest and most respected herbal tea in Guangzhou is Wang Laoji herbal tea, which is recognized as "the ancestor of herbal tea" and "the king of medicinal tea".
Ancient Lingnan was hot and humid with miasma. Many people have a fever, aches all over, chest tightness and pale face. Local people can only be treated by acupuncture, scraping and cupping. The pain is unbearable, and rows of black and red blood marks and calluses are scraped on people, and a person is unrecognizable.
According to legend, in the first year of Jiaqing in the Qing Dynasty (1796), there was a man named Wang Zebang (whose real name was Wang Ji) in the countryside of Heshan, Guangdong. Seeing this scene, he went up the mountain to collect medicine before dawn every day. Collect all kinds of Chinese herbal medicines with the knowledge of Chinese herbal medicines that I usually learned from my father and the knowledge of Chinese herbal medicines that I learned from Taoist priests and villagers in Luofu Mountain and Dinghushan Mountain, and then go home to make a fire and cook them, and then taste them myself. He found that his bitter tea was bitter first and then sweet, and his throat felt very comfortable. So he also asked the villagers to drink. After drinking for a while, the sick man gradually got better. The next day, they drank another bowl, and all the patients who took the medicine recovered. The news spread like wildfire, and people in the neighborhood and neighboring villages asked Wang Ji for medicine. A year later, epidemic diseases and summer fever (now called epidemic meningitis) occurred in this area, and people drank Xiao Aji's medicinal tea to avoid a disaster.
Wang Ji later went to Guangzhou and opened a small shop in Jingyuan Street (now East of Cultural Park) to practice medicine and sell herbal tea cooked by copper gourd. When Wang Ji was seeing a doctor, he found that many people were sick because of the hot weather. So, he and his son went to Baiyun Mountain to collect herbs, studied them carefully, chose a herbal tea prescription, and cooked it in the store for patients to drink. The effect was very effective.
It is said that when Lin Zexu banned smoking in Guangdong, it was summer, and he was exhausted all day, unfortunately suffering from heatstroke, sore throat and coughing. The entourage invited a famous doctor to prescribe medicine, but the effect was not obvious, and the condition became more and more serious, so they were very anxious. Someone actually found Wang Laoji, and the medicine was cured. So, Lin Zexu came to thank him and asked his name and medicine. Wang Laoji replied truthfully: "Everyone calls me Wang Laoji, just a few worthless herbs to cure you." Lin Zexu can't help but sigh: "The medicine is cheap, and the worthless herbs are boiled into tea, which shows the miraculous effect; Moreover, people can drink whatever they want, treat diseases and prevent diseases, and the poor can benefit more. " Later, I ordered someone to send me a big copper gourd jar with the words "Wang Lao Ji" engraved on it.
Wang Lao Ji Herbal Tea Shop is located in downtown area, and there are many dockers, rickshaws, vendors and passing merchants nearby. However, when you have a headache, fever, sore throat, constipation and bad breath, you can drink a bowl of herbal tea for two pence, which can quench your thirst and cure diseases, so it is crowded.
Because of the remarkable curative effect of copper gourd herbal tea, the local chamber of commerce and the neighborhood sent a plaque to Wang Laoji, which read "Hang a pot to save the world and benefit all beings". Wang Lao Ji herbal tea is widely spread, and everyone benefits. To this day, this is well known. Later, this herbal tea was simply called "Wang Lao Ji Herbal Tea", and a generation of herbal tea kings was born.
One year, there was a flu in Nanyang Islands, and there were many patients. After Wang Laoji knew about it, he gave himself a prescription of herbal tea to make many patients recover, and Wang Laoji's herbal tea began to spread to Southeast Asia. He also prepared a package of raw herbs, which was welcomed by overseas Chinese, and more and more overseas buyers sent letters. In the eighth year of Daoguang (182 1), Wang Lao Ji's brother opened the semicolon of Wang Lao Ji's herbal tea shop in Hong Kong and Australia respectively, which was Wang Lao Ji's original semicolon, and it lasted for a long time.
When Wang Laoji herbal tea was born, it appeared in the form of decoction. The medicinal materials are boiled in water and sold in bowls. If necessary, drink it at the counter. People used to be very convenient, also called "water bowl herbal tea". But people who need to drink must go to the herbal tea shop. In order to solve this problem, his descendants subcontracted and sold the medicinal materials according to the proportion of prescriptions, and took the "olive gourd" as the trademark, which was called the big tea bag. Since then, Wang Laoji herbal tea has been exported to all parts of the province. In the future, various herbal tea operators have followed suit, making herbal tea more famous. At that time, big tea bags had been taken overseas by Qian Qian's millions of "Laoguang" to make a living, and they were popular on five continents. It can be said that where there are Cantonese, there is Wang Laoji herbal tea.
Wang Lao Ji herbal tea was officially born nearly 200 years ago, which is a period of vigorous development of the southern herbal tea industry. There have been twenty or thirty brands, especially in recent years, there have been enterprises that produce herbal tea on a large scale. Such as: Deng Lao Herbal Tea, Qingxintang Herbal Tea, Xu Qixiu Herbal Tea, Loud Gong Herbal Tea, Twenty-four Herbal Tea and so on. There are also herbal teas, Azhen herbal teas, Li herbal teas and Ping 'antang herbal teas, all of which are operated in a new chain mode.
In addition, Xiasangju herbal tea introduced in 1980s opened up a new field of herbal tea granules.
It is said that Liang Qichao visited the United States from 1898 to 1903, and wrote a book "Travels of the New World", in which he wrote: "Westerners like to use Chinese medicine, so they are rich enough. There is a so-called Wang Laoji herbal tea. Two copper coins are posted in Guangdong and sold to westerners for five or ten dollars. " People buy big tea bags to go home and fry them into one bowl with two and a half bowls of water. Although it solves the problem of not going to herbal tea shop to drink herbal tea, it still needs to be cooked for a certain period of time. In the 1940s, Wang Laoji's descendants mixed the medicinal materials in proportion, ground them into coarse powder, and quantitatively packaged them for sale, which was called "Wang Laoji herbal tea powder". In this way, you can save the time of boiling medicine, just boil it for a while or boil it in water for two or three minutes. 1987, the herbal tea was made into granule and named as "Wang Lao Ji brand herbal tea", which is convenient to carry and take.
During the Cultural Revolution, due to political reasons, Wang Laoji herbal tea was renamed Guangdong herbal tea; Later, due to the spring breeze of reform and opening up, as the first brand of China herbal tea, Wang Laoji herbal tea was renamed again.
Wang Laoji herbal tea has been developed for more than 200 years. With the accelerated pace of people's life, there is no need to fry herbal tea yourself now. As long as you spend one or two yuan, you can drink the most authentic herbal tea immediately. In recent years, in order to meet the requirements of market trends and portability, people can drink canned herbal tea without going out.
On a hot day, drink a cup of herbal tea to cool off the heat; After a full meal, drink a cup of herbal tea to relieve hangover and reduce fire; When you catch a cold for the first time, drink a cup of herbal tea to drive away the cold.
Wang Laoji Herbal Tea, a century-old brand, is making unremitting efforts to continue and develop the herbal tea complex of Guangdong people and make new contributions to the health of people in Guangdong, the whole country and even the whole world. Will go out of South Guangdong, the whole country and the world at an unprecedented speed!