20 years of restarting life

Chapter 3709 Tea Sales Channels

Young women all enjoy talking and chatting with kind old ladies, and Zhao Chang'an believes this is absolutely true.

The clean and spacious courtyard is paved with thick basalt slabs of bluestone from the mountains. A century-old osmanthus tree with lush green leaves spreads like a large umbrella, where birds make their nests. A ginkgo tree with decades-old rings has gnarled branches. A lazy, big yellow dog lies there, fat from being fed, looking like a giant sausage from a distance.

The stone table was piled high with peanuts, melon seeds, walnuts, dried fruit, tea, apples, strawberries, rice cakes, and tangerines. Warm sunlight streamed down from the sky, and the courtyard wall and the mountain behind the house blocked out the wind. A group of chattering pretty girls surrounded the wrinkled old lady, listening to her tell her stories and the life insights that had been refined and polished by the years.

Wen Ye's grandmother was always a kind old woman. When Ye Yiyi called her "Sixth Grandmother" with a charmingly foreign accent, just like Ye Zi and Ye Ying had done before, the old woman didn't hold any resentment towards these younger generations. Instead, she felt a sense of affection for her family.

Zhao Chang'an and Liu Mingjie went to the home of the village secretary, Wen Shizhong, and chatted with a group of people, including the village secretary, village head, women's director, militia captain, and accountant.

As we chatted, the conversation turned to the upcoming spring tea picking season.

In Wenjia Village, the tea processing is now done uniformly by the village. Each household harvests green seedlings during the day and then sends them to the village office to be weighed. In the evening, skilled tea fryers in the village fry the tea and then sell it uniformly.

The heavy snow before the Lunar New Year provided the tea gardens in Wenjia Village with enough moisture and killed some pests. Now that the ground is warming up, the tea leaves have begun to sprout tender buds, and it will only be ten days to half a month before the pre-Qingming tea harvest.

Zhao Chang'an knew that what they were too embarrassed to say was the price of this year's spring tea.

Yi Nanmi purchased spring tea from Wenjia Village, including single-bud lotus heart tea, one bud and one leaf sparrow tongue tea, and one bud and two leaves staple tea. Last year, tea prices were normally based on market conditions, but the sales of Shancheng Maojian tea were sluggish. Yi Nanmi then increased its purchase price by 10% compared to the previous year. With Yi Nanmi as the starting point, the Rose Group, Luyuan, and Shancheng City's hospitality tea all adopted this standard.

Today is clearly a bumper year for tea in Shancheng, with production definitely exceeding last year's. The problem is that pesticide residues in Shancheng Maojian tea still exceed the standards, and the trend of bad money driving out good money shows no signs of being stopped. So what will the price of tea be this year? These tea farmers must still be feeling uneasy.

"This year, in order to support Fanping Tea House's investment in building a black tea production line, the city signed a three-year contract with Fanping Tea House before the Lunar New Year. All state-owned and collective enterprises and comprehensive service departments in the entire Shancheng City collectively purchased spring tea from Fanping. Previously, the Cultural Tourism Group also reported a quantity of 600 jin to the city's tea purchasing department. Therefore, Wenjia Village can only use the sales channels of Yinanmi this year."

Liu Mingjie offered a somewhat embarrassed explanation, but everyone knew that this matter couldn't be traced back to him. The contract was signed before the Lunar New Year, and at that time, neither Liu Mingjie nor Lin Yixia had any connection with the cultural tourism group.

"This year's tea sales are probably still bad. The reputation has been ruined by those unscrupulous people. It won't be easy to recover."

Wen Shizhong sighed, "Moreover, the tea leaves treated with this growth promoter look alright, but they taste very bland. Once others taste them, they'll think that Shancheng Maojian tea is not good."

"We have Mr. Zhao to guarantee our business, otherwise we would have to fight too, or we would lose money."

Women's Director Wen Ailian said, "Last year's prices were simply unbeatable."

"Even though Shancheng Maojian tea has a bad reputation, it's still not cheap outside. Fanpin and Xinya only pay 20 yuan per jin for the fresh lotus seedlings they buy, and four and a half jin of fresh tea yields one jin of dried tea. My son said that Fanpin sells a jin of pre-Qingming lotus seedlings for 600 yuan in Zhengzhou, which is almost equivalent to a person's monthly salary. They're using the pesticide residue issue to suppress the price of fresh tea from tea farmers, profiting from both sides. It's really wicked!"

Militia captain Wen Zhengang looked indignant.

"You guys chat, I'm going fishing."

Liu Mingjie felt a little awkward sitting there. Besides, he was really in a hurry to go fishing, and he wasn't familiar with the villagers. There were many things he couldn't say to Zhao Chang'an while sitting here. "I'll go take a look later."

Zhao Chang'an said something to Liu Mingjie, and after he left, he smiled and said, "It's nothing. I was originally going to talk to you about whether we could allocate more tea leaves to Yi Nan this year. Last year, there wasn't enough to drink, and after drinking our tea, other teas just taste bland and unpleasant. In addition, Yi Nan's scale has increased significantly last year. This year, we'll take as much of the pre-Qingming tea, Lianxin and Que She, from Wenjia Village as there is. As for the staple tea, I'll have them compile a list when I get back to see how much is needed, but the quantity will definitely be much more than last year. As for the price, it will be 15% higher than last year's price."

Zhao Chang'an's words immediately put everyone in Wenjia Village at ease, and their smiles and expressions became lively and cheerful.

"Actually, we can just use last year's price."

As the branch secretary, Wen Shizhong was quite particular and didn't want to take advantage of even a tiny bit.

"With economic development this year, prices have risen by more than 15%, but because we use a large quantity this year, we are selling at wholesale prices, so it will be cheaper. 15% is just right."

Zhao Chang'an smiled and reaffirmed the purchase price of the tea.

-

The small dock in Wenjia Village is a natural, sunny fishing spot with slightly warm water. The yacht was moored there, and Liu Mingjie simply moved a small stool onto the yacht and sat on the side to fish.

Zhao Chang'an and Wen Shizhong chatted for a while longer before discussing watching Liu Mingjie fish at the small dock by the lake.

Inside the house by the small dock, a chestnut charcoal fire was still burning, and inside were a black teapot, a bag of sweet potatoes, and several bags of charcoal.

Sweet potatoes in the mountains are worthless, and every household has a cellar filled with sweet potatoes that they can't finish eating.

The charcoal was specially made by the village's able-bodied men during the winter when they had nothing to do, and it was distributed to every household. Here, as a tourist spot, some charcoal has also been specially placed for tourists to roast sweet potatoes and use for heating, free of charge.

Zhao Chang'an took a kettle to the lake, filled it with water, hung it on a hook on a branch above the charcoal fire to boil the water, and then took a few sweet potatoes and buried them in the ash under the charcoal fire to roast them.

Watching Liu Mingjie fishing on a yacht not far away, he took out his phone and dialed Wen Ye's number.

"Watching Liu Mingjie fish by the lake, Grandma and Ye Yiyi get along quite well, and a group of women are chatting with your grandma at home."

Zhao Chang'an said with a smile, "There are so many girls, I'm dizzy just looking at them."

"Xiao Xuecheng's secretary called me and said he wanted to see me this afternoon."

Wenye said on the other end, "I was just about to call you to talk about this."