Lu Yan

Representative works: Jiaxing-Red Boat Sailing Today, Tianshui Ancient City-Huang Xi's Hometown, etc.

Zhou Xiaoxiao

Representative works: Zunyi-a city that will always be loyal at the turning point of the revolution, Huawu Village-melodious Miao songs under the cliff, etc.

Taoyun You Ran, a small village in northern Guizhou.

Just arrived in Huamao Village, a snowy rain put a white coat on northern Guizhou in early spring. Shiny snowflakes spread on the green tiles, fell on the green vegetable garden and piled on the branches that just showed spring buds, making the village present a beautiful snow scene different from the north. According to the eldest brother in the village, it doesn't often snow like this here, so all the men, women and children in the village came out to enjoy the snow scene with excited expressions on their faces, and the scene was very lively. But soon, after the afternoon, the sun came out, the village shed its white coat, everything was like a new life, and spring was everywhere, which made us really see the weather in Guizhou and see the four seasons in one day.

Walking into the village entrance, it is a quaint ceramic culture street. At first, we thought it was just a recreational street, just like many scenic streets created by rural tourism, but when we gradually learned about the development history of this village, we realized that the rise and fall of this village and the course it had gone through were closely related to the pottery industry.

Uncle Liu in the village said that almost everyone in this village can make pottery. This seemingly simple craft actually requires a lot of efforts, which makes us interested in the history and ceramic culture of the village. What is the connection between this village and the pottery industry?

Following this clue, we visited Cao Ping, a retired potter in the village. Uncle Cao is over 60 years old, but he is still skilled and calm in pottery making. During the chat, we learned that 130 years ago, Cao Ping's grandfather, Cao Tinghai, brought the pottery-making skills from Sichuan to Huamao Village. Huamao Village has a natural advantage in pottery making. The soil under its feet is excellent clay, surrounded by all kinds of red pottery and white mud. These good materials for making pottery provide opportunities for the village to develop its pottery industry.

Before that, people in the village planted some food on their own land. Since Cao Tinghai opened the first pottery workshop in Huamao Village, the pottery industry began to bring sideline income to the villagers. Slowly, Huamao Village became a place where novel pottery could be made at that time. Because Zunyi, Guizhou is rich in famous wines, Huamao Village has become one of the important producing areas of wine vessels.

Cao Ping told us that the technological requirements for making wine bottles are actually more stringent, especially in the calcination process, the temperature should be controlled at 1300 degrees, so as to ensure that the clay is hard enough and does not leak when burned. However, in history, there were apprentices who delayed the burning of wine bottles because of bad habits such as alcoholism, resulting in inferior products.

We are inspired by this story, and all links need to be coordinated in order to succeed. But the story didn't end here. What happened next made us really touch the cultural roots of the development of this village. As the leader at that time, Cao Tinghai found that the local people had bad hobbies such as playing cards, smoking and drinking, so he built the first stage for the village at his own expense, bought many gongs and drums instruments and taught everyone to sing. Only in this way can we gradually help everyone get rid of bad habits and form a good rural civilization. This seemingly simple action may be a way of village governance at first.

The second important node in the development of the village is that the pottery industry was seriously impacted by industrial products in the 1990s. After that, the village gradually fell into depression. In the next two or three decades, the countryside is facing the problem of how to transform and how to get out of the quagmire of poverty. Around 20 14, with the support of poverty alleviation policy, the government invested manpower, material resources and funds to make unified planning for villages, and the development of villages ushered in an important turning point.

Ceramics museum's mother, who opened in Ceramic Culture Street, witnessed the change of the village's fate. Recalling the scene of selling pottery pots before, my mother, who has been very gentle, suddenly got excited. In the past, the environment in the village was poor and the road was difficult to walk. My mother had to pull the burnt clay pot to the county to sell. Whether they can sell it or not, they lost 40% of their money on the bumpy road. The family can only maintain basic expenses by selling pottery pots. Now, spacious roads run through the whole village, and more and more tourists come to visit. The villagers who start the pottery business again in the village can live a good life without leaving the village at all.

The third story is about the development of rural agriculture, and the foundation of rural development always lies in agriculture. Huamao Village promotes agricultural transformation in the form of village collective cooperatives. Unlike other cooperatives that employ villagers as employees, Huamao Village's cooperatives bring the land transferred by villagers into unified management, the village collective guarantees agricultural materials and technology, and the villagers rent greenhouses for farming. What to plant, how to plant it, how to prevent it, what fertilizer to apply, months of transplanting, months of pest control and so on. , are co-operative planning and management. As long as the villagers do it, they can have a high yield. Finally, cooperatives will also buy crops planted by villagers, which will greatly improve the agricultural resources and production efficiency of the village. This mode of production has increased the income of the village collective by more than 4 million in just a few years.

Our shooting time has just entered the early spring, and the weather is not warm, but the situation of rural tourism is ready to go, and tourists come to punch in from time to time. We walked on the neat village road, the weather was fine and the countryside was fresh. The villagers repaired bonsai and made handicrafts in their small yard. The house was bright and the courtyard was spacious. Everyone can't help but sigh, isn't this the idyllic life that many people imagine?

At the end of this program, I read the article "Where are the magical villages?" and found that all the villages we filmed were "showing their magical powers" on the road of rural revitalization. But when you really approach it, you find that it doesn't need to be magical, and it is desirable enough to satisfy our imagination of rural life.

Edit | Li Yuting