Silk Road memories and dreams far away
——Chronicle of Suyun Xiangzhuang, Suzhou District, Jiuquan
Dogs bark in the deep alley, chickens chirp mulberry trees upside down. The poetic rural environment was once a deep memory of many people's traditional Chinese villages. On the ancient Silk Road, the ancient county "Jiuquan County" at the western end of the Hexi Corridor was the suzhou district of today's Jiuquan City. On the banks of the Liaolai River, which runs through the city, a quaint homestay with strong local rural cultural characteristics, Suyun Xiangzhuang, has attracted people's attention.
With the advancement of urban integration, many houses in traditional villages have been demolished and rebuilt, many farmers have entered the city to live, and traditional living tools and production tools have been abandoned and disappeared. Preserving people's memories of rural folklore and those living utensils and production tools that embody the wisdom of the masses is the original intention of Li Jinsheng, the owner of Suyun Xiangzhuang, to build a homestay. As a peasant child, it will be a meaningful thing to be able to restore the scene of his juvenile life in his hometown, restore the cultural atmosphere left by his ancestors, and leave a Silk Road mark on the ancient "Jiuquan County". Who would have thought that it was this very thing that would exhaust his life's energy and financial resources!
The famous writer Feng Jicai said that each ancient village is a thick book, and we cannot wait for us to read it carefully, so that these ancient villages will disappear in the tide of urbanization. The rapid disappearance of home and country houses and utensils made Li Jinsheng feel sad, and an unprecedented impulse and reverence made him choose a different road of dream building and nostalgia. He returned to the countryside from the city and went from being an art teacher to a rural entrepreneur. In the desolate suburbs across the river from the bustling city, starting from adobe, brick tiles, wooden frames, starting from large wheels, stone grinding discs, and kang tables, these ancient rural elements have shaken off the vicissitudes of time from the dust of history. Li Jinsheng has been running back and forth for more than 20 years looking for old objects, so that this monotonous brownish yellow land is rich in color. The utensils from the Republic of China to the present have made the lost culture glow with brilliant humanistic brilliance.
Over time, the light and shadow of time are changing, reflecting not only the brick and earth walls, cornices, and deep corridors, but also Li Jinsheng's original intention and responsibility to adhere to, that is, to protect the relics left by his ancestors. The living style has not changed, the scene is still complete, pleasant and livable. In today's rural revitalization and traditional cultural revival, only by guarding the beautiful nostalgia can we retain the foundation of the cultural context. This is an old homestay, but also the green mountains and rivers in his heart.
Spices of the "station"
A burning incense, four directions and many ethereal spirits.
Before the German geographer Richthofen proposed the concept of the "Silk Road", the ancient Silk Road was already a prestigious jade road, a spice road and a fine seed road in the time or so when Zhang Qian "chiseled". Even in the ancient Zhou Mu King's western tour, the Silk Road has already revealed its beginnings.
In the book of discovery of the Orient, "Marco Polo's Travels", the East is "full of gold, spices are full of wild", so the "Maritime Silk Road" is also known as the "Spice Road", and the spices in the western region cross the Green Ridge, cross the fire island and the Hanhai with the camel caravan, and enter the "first largest city in the East into the Central Plains" Suzhou. Gujun Jiuquan became a spice "station" for transit.
After Buddhism was introduced to the mainland, the Tang and Song dynasties reached its peak, and spices from the western regions evolved from imperial tributes to commodities and medicines, and their reputation spread far and wide. In the "Four Counties of Hexi", jiuquan occupies two counties, and the grottoes are closely connected to the temple, and the incense is exuberant, which goes without saying. As a transit station of Silk Road trade, when spices extended from the imperial court to the people, Suzhou at that time was not only a workshop for spice sorting, packaging and grading, but also assumed the protagonist role of the same cascade undertaking as today's wholesale and retail.
While excavating the culture of Suzhou Xiangdao, Li Jinsheng opened up a "tea incense hall", while tasting Pu'er and Tea tea in Yangguan in the west, listening to Sanskrit sounds and smelling the fragrance of the east. Here he demonstrates the preparation of various spices and the method of burning incense, so that the impetuous world can be transformed into a clear space. The exchange, collision and integration of Chinese and Western cultures are drummed up in the heart without a trace of dust.
Suyun Xiangzhuang, Li Jinsheng highlights a "fragrant" word. For the Silk Road, this word is a long road of cultural thought and religious belief; for Suzhou, it is the rich human fireworks in the great changes of history. Cigarettes are everywhere, but they are not nothing, and if the heart stops water, there is fire. This should be a rock that Li Jinsheng has pressed on time for many years, he is not a pilgrim, he wants to retain the context of the Silk Road, let the Xiangdao culture take root on the Silk Road that is revived today, he is the owner.
Li Jinsheng's Suyun Xiangzhuang has a soul at this point.
The story of the big instrument
The poet Ai Qing has a poem that has been widely circulated: Why are my eyes full of tears, because I love this land deeply. This is the deepest expression of nostalgia. The construction of Suyun Xiangzhuang Homestay pins on Li Jinsheng's infinite attachment to his hometown.
Ten miles of different winds, a hundred miles of different customs. Qianli Hexi Corridor, ancient traditional villages and folk customs, homestay culture, is a non-renewable cultural resources that people have retained in the survival and development of thousands of years, it carries the memory of a country and a nation; homestay culture is an important part of Jiuquan traditional culture, carrying the nostalgia of Jiuquan people, is an important carrier to retain the memory of Jiuquan people and enhance cultural self-confidence. In the multi-ethnic convergence, Jiuquan Homestay has formed a folk custom with local characteristics and unique style, and has accumulated a thick and profound historical heritage.
The basic pattern of Jiuquan Homestay, looking back today, is a four-beam and eight-pillar courtyard pattern. The traditional homestay in Suzhou City, until around 2000, can still be seen in the post and telecommunications lane, which was built in the late Qing Dynasty and the beginning of the people, because its pattern is a courtyard built on four sides of the house, from the four sides of the courtyard enclosed in the middle, so the name of the courtyard. When Li Jinsheng built Suyun Xiangzhuang, he cleverly connected each courtyard through the traditional Chinese corridor, forming a situation where the corridors were connected, the courtyards were independent, and the atmosphere was consistent with the yin and yang five elements theory.
The highlight of homestay culture must maintain the great instrument of the people. The big rudder car, which is an ancient cultural symbol of Jiuquan. As early as the Western Jin Dynasty Zhang Hua's "Naturalist", there is a record: "Jiuquan Yanshou County Nanshan, the name of the fire spring, the fire out of the torch, the county people call the stone fat water." "Stone fat water is oil. Later, northern Wei Li Daoyuan in his compilation of the geographical work "Notes on water", there is a more specific record of oil: "Jiuquan Yanshou Nanshan out of the spring water, water has fertilizer, such as gravy, take the vessel, the beginning of the yellow and then black, for not gelatinizing, burning extremely bright, and the ointment is undoubtedly, the ointment car and the water are very good, the natives call the stone paint." "What does this have to do with the big wheeled car?" The large reel axle of the wooden structure is extremely worn, and in order to increase the lubrication, the axle is coated with oil, which has been popular for thousands of years. It can be seen from here that at least during the Northern Wei Dynasty, the big wheeled car had already traveled on the urban and rural avenues of Jiuquan. In the 1980s, when the first round of land contracting was carried out, there were still many large wagons in Jiuquan Village, and cattle and camels could be applied, which played a great role in daily production.
These great instruments of Suyun Xiangzhuang are like a blood vein, flowing in the folk, flowing in the cultural customs line from ancient times to the present, and have become the cornerstone of Li Jinsheng's attachment to his homeland, love his homeland, and build his homeland.
Li Jinsheng's Suyun Xiangzhuang now had a bloodline.
Local dreams
What is The Vernacular? In Li Jinsheng's mind, it is home. This is very specific, for those who do not want to leave the land, do not want to leave their homeland, there is a pious heart.
Fei Xiaotong, one of the founders of Chinese sociology and anthropology, believes that Chinese society is local from the grassroots level. "The local society, under the restriction of locality, has become a society of birth and death." People grew up in familiar environments, and social customs passed down from generation to generation guided their behavior. In such a society, the language is enough to transmit the experience of generations, and the whole culture can be imparted between parents and children.
The tranquil Suyun Xiangzhuang first woke up in the snowmelt waves of the crystal clear River, and then on the horizon where the sun was rising in the east, there was a warm red halo on the roof ridge, lintel, window sill, and corridor. At this time, Li Jinsheng, who woke up early, had his footprints clearly printed in the courtyard. Late spring in the northwest, snow and fallen leaves, still exude the unique atmosphere of the countryside.
Suyun Xiangzhuang, a characteristic residence of Jiuquan, covers an area of six acres. In the eight years since its establishment, there have been frequent visits and scholars of the Silk Road at home and abroad, self-driving tourists of the Greater Qinghai Ring Road, and local literati and officials. What tripped them was the unique "local dish" of the Hexi Corridor. However, Li Jinsheng has expanded this Zhuangzi proposition to the extreme: calligraphy and painting, collection, tea art, incense, and the lonely countryside made by the white snow of Yangchun, adding a strong sense of poetry.
This is the dwelling place of the soul, the place where dreams are continued. Suyun Xiangzhuang was exactly one of Li Jinsheng's dreams. The place where Li Jinsheng was born and spent his childhood and adolescence is also the place where he was born. He walked out of here, studied, worked, and wandered, and then returned here to continue the dream about the landscape and customs of his hometown that remained in his heart.
Li Jinsheng, who came from an art class, began the road of building dreams with straight lines, arcs, curves, and painting scenes in his heart. The people of his hometown gave him great support. On the banks of the Liaolai River, Suyun Xiangzhuang starts from a road, a tree, a tile, and a piece of wood, and in his mind, on a design sketch, the three-dimensional space outlined gradually appears.
Suyun Xiangzhuang is a home, and the old furniture here is dazzling. This was something that Li Jinsheng had bought from ten miles and eight townships one by one through the cold and summer; the beam rafters used here were pulled back from the ruins of an old house that had been demolished; more than 100,000 pieces of old handmade green tiles used on the roof and walls had been bought at a high price from Shaanxi and Longnan, Gansu, thousands of kilometers away; all the carpentry work in the courtyard was done by five old carpenters he had specially found from the four townships with traditional craftsmanship. After three years of continuous work, there is now a 70-year-old carpenter busy for Suyun Xiangzhuang...
More than three thousand days and nights, dreams become reality little by little.
Many times, Li Jinsheng guarded Zhuangzi, and a person slowly recalled: learning to weave baskets with the old people in the village in his childhood, learning art in the university in his youth, and then engaging in interior design and decoration... Almost all the experiences and trials are preparations for the realization of this dream.
At the end of 2021, the Ministry of Culture and Tourism officially announced the first batch of 31 national Grade A tourist homestays, and Suyun Xiangzhuang was listed among them. After receiving the news forwarded by the person in charge of the Resource Planning and Rural Tourism Department of the Gansu Provincial Department of Culture and Tourism, Li Jinsheng sat in the courtyard and watched the Xinhua financial cable over and over again, and was speechless for a long time. Years of dedication have been recognized and affirmed by the state, and this great sense of satisfaction and honor is something he has never had before. At the same time, the successful creation of the national Grade A tourist homestay also gave him greater motivation, inspiring him to strengthen his confidence and continue to work hard in the direction of creating a first-class tourist homestay.
The national "Basic Requirements and Evaluation of Tourist Homestays" has meticulous and harsh requirements for the creation of Grade A tourist homestays, and in the process of creating a national Grade A homestay in Suyun Xiangzhuang, the Department of Culture and Tourism of Gansu Province attaches great importance to helping Suyun Xiangzhuang solve difficulties by giving financial subsidies, financing credits and other means, and also cultivates tourist homestay management talents by building a training base for country houses and organizing training classes for homestay owners. Li Jinsheng has participated in three publicity and trainings on the basic requirements and evaluation of national tourist homestays. The leaders of the Resource Planning and Rural Tourism Department of the Provincial Department of Culture and Tourism have led experts to Jiuquan for many times, guided the homestay planning on the spot, carefully planned the theme projects, and strived to achieve differentiation, personalization and quality in the product construction of Suyun Xiangzhuang.
In the ancient courtyard, a new hope for Jiuquan houses was nurtured.
The well-laid-out courtyard, the old-fashioned buildings of green tile wood, the furnishings and the old objects in use still have the brilliance of life that has not been annihilated by the years. Some people drink alone here, there are three or five people drinking freely, some people take selfies and leave traces of vibrato, and some people wander alone in the corridor courtyard. Suyun Xiangzhuang is not Li Jinsheng's dream alone, but the dream of many people.
In front of the guest room on the second floor of Suyun Xiangzhuang, there is a semi-open corridor. Standing on the corridor, you can see the top of Qilian Mountain with snow all year round. The snow-capped peaks there, connected to the mighty River, watered the oases and villages. Life goes on, spring and autumn go back and forth, and the dreams in the light and shadow make the countryside more nostalgic and more vision, which is the farthest place for Li Jinsheng to see.
Li Jinsheng's Suyun Xiangzhuang has now had a skeleton.
The boutique of the homestay
The homestay is not just a courtyard zhuangzi, nor is it just a home, but should be the appearance of an ancient village. Li Jinsheng did not stop, and the radiation power of Suyun Xiangzhuang was also accumulating.
Writing here, we turned the title page to really unveil the beginning of Suyun Xiangzhuang - a homestay with a big pattern and big ideas.
——Introduce multi-ethnic homestays, where there are not only quaint courtyards, but also Kazakh felt houses, yurts, gongs and drums full of Qin cavity, and the sound of winter bula and horse head. A miniature version of the essence of The Jiuquan House, with both scale and temperature. This will be a colorful garden of folk art. The homestay that sets up the stage will have a richer background color and connotation.
-- In the process of urban-rural integration, the rural characteristics of Jiuquan are disappearing sharply. For example, with the use of new building materials, the original adobe houses and courtyards in the countryside have been replaced by buildings made of cement prefabricated panels and hollow bricks; the living culture has intensified and disappeared, so the characteristic homestays and villages are retained, and the living culture is protected, and the characteristic villages are attractive. What needs to be protected and restored is not only a good ecological environment, but also a unique architectural style and rural style, as well as the cultural characteristics of the villagers in terms of language, clothing, food, song and dance, etiquette and so on.
--------------------------------------- Qilian Mountain's strange peaks and valleys, rivers, pines, flowers and plants are everywhere, in addition to the Qilian Mountain National Park, there are still explorers and tourists off-road the earth, explore the mountains and rivers, enjoy the natural space. In Jiuquan, which lacks natural landscapes, opening up such a new landscape means a new beginning for Suyun Xiangzhuang.
While Highlighting the Culture of Homestay, the injection of new cultural elements will extend many elements related to cultural inheritance and tourism industry. Homestays and tourism are linked in flesh and blood, and homestay tourism and folk tourism complement each other, which is already a result for all to see. The homestay tourism provided by Suyun Xiangzhuang in the future will bring a new cultural enjoyment, which will be the unique charm of Gujun Jiuquan.
This is the boutique of Jiuquan or Gansu Homestay. When we walk into Suyun Xiangzhuang, every courtyard, every artifact, and even every folk craft it displays tells the same story: the homestay gathers the essence of multi-ethnic customs and cultures for eight thousand years of Chinese civilization.
Li Jinsheng's Suyun Xiangzhuang has thus blossomed and scattered its leaves.
Source: Jiuquan Daily
Jiuquan Daily all-media reporter: Chen Sixia
Photo: Chen Sixia Bian Shiwen
Editor: He Huan
Review: Jiang Li Final: Cao Li
Gansu Province Internet News Information Service License Number: 62120180005