Tea People Trilogy (3 Volumes) (3 Volumes)

Author: Wang Xufeng
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2005-01-01
Features: In the spring of 1981, Mr. Mao Dun bequeathed 250,000 yuan of his manuscript fees to the Chinese Writers' Association, donating it as a fund to establish a long award to reward the outstanding long novels each year. This marked the origin of the Mao Dun Literature Prize. Over the following two decades, this highest award in contemporary Chinese literature has always attracted widespread attention and had a tremendous impact. To date, the Mao Dun Literature Prize has held five sessions, with 22 long novels winning the prize (with two more works receiving honorary awards). Our publishing house has been publishing the "Mao Dun Literature Prize Winning Series" since the spring of 1998, successively including 11 works published and awarded by our house. Subsequently, many authors, readers, and relevant individuals have expressed the desire to see the complete collection of all winning works of the Mao Dun Literature Prize; they believe that fully reflecting the achievements of the highest award in contemporary Chinese literature is necessary and beneficial. With the strong support of authors, their families, and relevant publishing organizations, the "Complete Collection of Mao Dun Literature Prize Winning Works" has finally been published. The "Complete Collection of Mao Dun Literature Prize Winning Works" has undergone textual collation for all works. For some multi-volume works that won awards in part, the entire works have been included this time. The Tea Master Trilogy takes the rise and fall of the four generations of the Hang Jiuzhai family, the owners of the Wanguyou Tea House in Hangzhou, the capital of green tea, as its main thread, shaping characters such as Hang Tianzui, Hang Jiahé, Zhao Jike, and Shen Lüèi, each with distinct social significance and artistic brilliance. It depicts the temperament and spirit of the Hangzhou tea masters who endure hardships, cleanse the impure, sacrifice blood, and still struggle forward on the arduous path of life, embodying the tenacious spirit of the Chinese nation in its pursuit of survival and development, as well as its deep love for freedom and yearning for a brighter future. The smoke of green tea, the steam of blood, the collision of hearts, and the entanglement of love intertwine under the author's elegant, gentle yet powerful brushwork. The vicissitudes of the century, the history of Hangzhou, the rise and fall of the tea industry, and the sentiments of the tea people are interwoven, melting into one, demonstrating the author's particularly rare historical insight and skill in depicting large-scale social phenomena in the current era. The story takes place in Hangzhou, the capital of green tea, where Hang Jiuzhai, the inheritor of the Wanguyou Tea House, was a tea merchant in Jiangnan during the late Qing Dynasty. He was elegant and charming but poor at managing his business and finances, ultimately dying on the couch of a courtesan. The next generation of tea masters is Hang Tianzui, who grew up during the era when the feudal dynasty collapsed completely and the Republic of China was born. He was always torn between and, possessing knowledge, talent, passion, and ambition, yet indecisive. He loved his boyfriend, wife, concubine, and children, but ultimately loved himself into confusion, having no choice but to flee to the Buddhist monastery. Hang Tianzui's three sons and two daughters lived in an even broader era, participating in the rise and fall of Chinese tea in various capacities and ways. Among them, the destinies of the nation, the family, and the individuals were intertwined in complex and fluctuating ways, and the rise and fall of the tea house were closely linked to the century-long rise and fall of Chinese tea. As a result, the novel weaves a long scroll depicting the fate of Chinese tea masters in modern and contemporary history.