It is a fact that Bama 100-year-old people have often eaten camellia oil since childhood. It is also true that people who eat camellia oil from snacks may not live to 100 years old. In this subtle relationship, Bama camellia oil is famous for its health care and beauty, and is known as "Oriental olive oil".
Luo Mizheng, female, Yao, from Yaomeizhai, Shangqin Village, Suoluo Township, Bama Yao Autonomous County. 1On the morning of May 5, 990, she ate a bowl of rice, drank about 200 grams of rice wine and a bowl of boiled water, went back to bed and died at the age of 130. According to the records of Bama County, Luo Muzheng's height is 168cm. He picked 100 kg of lime several times and sold it in Yandong market 42 kilometers away. He doesn't feel very tired. Luo Zezheng eats a lot. He can eat at most one Jin of rice and 1.5 Jin of chicken at a meal. The oil he usually eats includes local camellia oil.
When many media interview the long-lived elderly in Bama, it is often inseparable from the topic of diet. There are many reasons for longevity, but what is certain is that all the elderly in Bama have the habit of eating camellia oil. The towns of Solo, Nashe and Yandong in Bama are the main producing areas of camellia oil raw materials-tea seeds. Guangxi Medical University has done a study, and the physical and chemical characteristics of camellia oil are very similar to those of olive oil, and compared with olive oil, the unsaponifiable matter content of camellia oil is very small. Compared with olive oil, peanut oil, rapeseed oil and lard, camellia oil has the highest oleic acid content, reaching more than 80%. Oleic acid is an important nutrient in edible oil.
The tree that produces tea seeds is called Camellia oleifera locally, and there are two kinds of flowers: red flower and white flower. Camellia safflower is mainly distributed in northern Guangxi, and Camellia Bama is more common.
Some locals get up early in the morning and don't put hair care water or cosmetics on their faces after grooming. Instead, they apply a little camellia oil to their hair or face to make their hair shiny and their face smooth. In the past, the tea bran left after oil extraction from tea seeds was folk washing powder or shampoo. The oil yield of Bama tea seeds is high, and the highest oil can be extracted from 100 kg of tea seeds by more than 30 kg.
Before 1982, people in rural areas of Solo used home-made oil presses to extract oil. When the locals introduce this machine, they can describe it as "bared their teeth"-the introducer's Mandarin is not very good, and a group of people are particularly excited when he speaks, so each introducer is doing different "actions" and goes on before others understand what the first sentence means. In the meantime, someone suddenly stood up and said to the reporter, "Draw a picture for you and you will understand."
A few strokes, a schematic diagram of oil production appeared in front of the reporter: a man stood next to a big log (the belly of the log had been hollowed out), and this man took a sledgehammer and smashed it straight at the sharp block on the log. A force passed from the bottom of the sharp wood to the cork in the "abdominal cavity" of the log, and the cork squeezed out the tea in the log conveniently. The cork moves forward in small steps until the oil is drained.
Logs vary in diameter, with a larger diameter of 50 to 60 cm and a length of about 6 meters. You can squeeze about 75 kilograms of tea seeds at a time. In this home-grown method of oil extraction, camellia oleifera seeds should be crushed and steamed, pressed into moon cakes and stuffed into the "abdominal cavity" of logs one by one. Initially, each tea seed cake was about 10 cm thick. After the oil drained, it was "slimmed down" into a thin chopping block. It takes half a day to squeeze oil like this, and it takes five or six people to help. It takes time and effort to swing the hammer in turn.
Before 1970s, there were five local oil presses in Fucun alone. As soon as each oil press made a noise, the smell of oil filled the whole village. Adults and children smell the fragrance. In order to get some tea oil or tea bran to eat, wash their hair and wash their clothes, they stay next to the oil room.
1982, Fucun owned the first electric oil press. Since this year, the local oil press has gradually disappeared in the village. The electric oil press does not need any technology to extract oil. Pour the dried tea seeds into the machine and wait for the oil to fill. The oil yield is twice that of the local oil press.
Villagers often bring raw materials and ask local people to extract oil. Strangely, the villagers not only don't have to pay the processing fee, but also get remuneration ranging from several yuan to several tens of yuan, provided that the villagers leave tea bran without reservation. It turns out that the price of tea bran is not cheap, once it reached the price of about 4 yuan per kilogram, and the oil press made money from these tea bran.
The recorded history of planting Camellia oleifera in Bama can be traced back to the middle of Qing Dynasty. 1962, the county's tea seed output was 5 10000 Jin, the lowest annual output since the founding of New China. It didn't recover until the 1970s, and the annual output was stable at 6.5438+0.0000 kg. According to the statistics of Bama Forestry Bureau, there are currently 376,000 mu of Camellia oleifera in the county, with an annual output of about 6 million Jin of tea seeds, and the output is not high. There are three main reasons: first, most camellia oleifera trees have not been improved, and the yield per mu is only tens of kilograms; Second, Camellia oleifera is too close to contact, and the light of the tree is insufficient; Third, a considerable number of farmers have to dig under the trees when harvesting camellia seeds.
Why are you digging the ground? The cadres of Bama Forestry Bureau said that the move was actually for the convenience of farmers to pick seeds. Seed collection is a traditional local habit of collecting tea seeds, that is, the tea seeds naturally fall to the ground after maturity and are picked up from the ground manually. Although digging the ground under the tree improves the picking speed, it causes soil erosion, and farmers generally don't topdress tea trees, which affects the growth of tea trees in the next year. Some farmers are even more "out of line", digging under trees one month before harvest. In fact, this time is still in the growing season of tea seeds. In this way, the "picked" tea seeds are naturally not full enough, and the oil yield is greatly reduced. Through years of publicity, many farmers have changed the bad habit of "digging holes before selecting seeds".
Zhou Tao is the branch secretary of the village committee of fu cun, and also a large local camellia oleifera planter, with 80 mu of camellia oleifera forest. With tea seeds, he can earn about 30 thousand yuan a year. Now, like many people in the village, he built a bungalow, picked the collected tea seeds and put them on the roof to dry. He also built a hut upstairs to store the dried tea seeds, which is very convenient. But before the 1980s, drying tea seeds was not so happy.
At that time, Zhou Tao's family didn't have a bungalow, so it was not easy to find a place to dry tea seeds, so he had to bake them indoors. The whole room, even several rooms, are erected with bamboo curtains, large and small, or only one room-sized bamboo curtain, with four or five centimeters thick raw tea seeds spread on the bamboo curtain, and then the tea seeds are baked under the shelf with low fire and turned over every once in a while. After several turns, the sound of tea seeds colliding with each other, thumped when kicked, indicating that they should continue baking; If sonic boom is sent, it means that it has been dried and can be put into storage or sold. Baking a batch of tea seeds, depending on the weather, is as short as a few days and as long as two weeks. This is a very frustrating thing. Moreover, the tea seeds baked in this way seem to have been to a coal mine once, and the "skin" becomes deeper, and the pressed oil will lose its luster.
There are two ways for farmers in Suoluo Township to harvest tea seeds, one is to collect seeds and the other is to pick fruits. Picking fruit is a convenient way. Before the tea seeds naturally open their shells and fall to the ground, they are picked, aired and shelled. Relatively speaking, picking seeds can ensure the quality of pressed tea oil, picking fruits will increase the foam of tea oil, the oil color is not bright enough and the oil yield is low.
No matter how high the price is, the villagers in Fucun will keep about 50 kilograms of tea seeds at home, and bring them to the village to work and extract oil for themselves when they are free. The original camellia oil is yellow and packed in a bottle, just like peanut oil. Based on the traditional technology, the new technology can extract camellia oil and form translucent camellia oil, which is the transparent camellia oil seen in supermarkets today. This camellia oil is not only edible, but also often used for beauty.
The best price of tea seeds was in 2007, when foreign bosses and local bosses snapped up Bama tea seeds. The price per kilogram increased from 8 yuan to 1 1 yuan, and the price of 1 1 yuan was set by foreign bosses. This phenomenon actually exposes the confusion of Bama people today: people in deep processing enterprises think that the raw materials are not enough, which affects the processing of camellia oil; However, management and farmers say this is not the case. The purchase price of foreign bosses is high, so most of Bama's tea seeds naturally flow to other places. Take Fucun as an example, 60% of the tea seeds in this village were bought by foreign bosses, who came from Hunan, Jiangxi and other provinces. This means that the key to the shortage of raw materials for Bama camellia oil processing enterprises lies in their own purchase price. In addition, these enterprises have not yet built their own large-scale camellia forest.