Qilu Network Lightning News December 13 news Speaking of Qixia's folk cuisine, the first impression is to count the big food. Every year on the twentieth day of the Waxing Moon, every household in the countryside begins to steam the New Year festival, and there are many kinds of dumplings: there are jujube dumplings, milk dumplings, fish dumplings, "years" and so on, the staple food of the whole New Month, that is called a beautiful ah!
The custom of making Qixia flower dumplings is a provincial intangible cultural heritage, which has been passed down in an orderly and long-standing manner, and has become an influential folk art treasure.
Qixia people used to do rao in the past to do a magical "powder", a natural whitening agent - "rao powder", also known as "white mud", the main ingredient calcium carbonate, harmless to the human body. In the era of scarce white noodles, it is often only used to use two bran noodles, less white noodles, and the steamed dumplings taste acceptable, but the color is not good, as the saying goes, "relatives do not go to the table". At this time, if you rub the surface of the gluttony with "powder", dress up, steam it out and "look at it and eat it". This habit has been preserved in the mountainous areas, and it is still a must-have for the rural elderly to steam the big pot with a large pot, and it is also the "eye-catching" thing when representative non-hereditary inheritors such as Qixia", "Jiaodong Little Daughter-in-law" and "Qiao Mei" make flowers and dumplings.
"Cook fruit and wood miscellaneous grains in busy time, dig talc powder to maintain livelihood in leisure time, the people's customs are simple, and life is abundant..." This passage in the bird's-eye view of the village that I saw in the offices of the two committees of Luanjiazhuang Village in Miaohou Town this year was written by Mr. Lin Chunhe, a cadre of China Agricultural University in this village. It gave me a new understanding of the living customs of the people in the mining area and a strong interest in the production technique of "Gluttonous Powder". Taking advantage of the opportunity of home visits, I came into contact with lin tuanqing, Xu Peilin, Xu Linlin and other old "powder smiths", visited some "powder caves" and handicraft workshops, mastered the basic production process and sorted out and excavated.
"Rao Rao Powder" production technology, for the Qixia unique traditional handicraft project, and the custom of flowers and flowers has been passed down for hundreds of years, with distinct regional, folk, original ecological characteristics, Qixia Temple, Taocun, Tingkou and other parts of the town have "Rao Powder" resources, especially Miaohou Town as a typical representative. Miaohou Town, located in the northeast of Qixia, has ten peaks above 400 meters above sea level, such as the Old Temple Peak, the South Heavenly Gate, the Three-ForkEd Peak, and the Jinzi Peak, which are rich in resources and are famous as the talc town. In the north, there is a nationally renowned talc mineral area centered on Luanjiazhuang Village, which not only contains talc such as jade, but also produces "white powder" for steamed buns and asbestos for casting braziers. "Rao Rao powder" is a companion mine of talc, raw materials are mainly produced in this area of Dongtaiwa, powder green, talc Wang and other hillsides, after mining in the 1980s "powder cave" can be seen everywhere, now the cave entrance is mostly buried.
According to the local "powder smith", there are three main processes in the production of "gluttonous powder": the first "mining", that is, the "white mud" slag is dug out of the mine. Powder caves are all veins, through the experience handed down by the elderly craftsmen or people who understand the millstone to explore, first find the direction of the vein and the point suitable for mining, with 20 or 30 cm long pickaxe, shovel and other tools to clean up the surface of the sludge, slowly chisel out of the hole. Cat waist along the direction of the vein a little manual mining, into the hole sometimes have to half crouch while digging, shallow when three or four meters, deep when one or two inches away, but digging too deep powder slag hardness and high quality is not high. The purity of the powder ore raw materials after cutting out is different, often 80% of the powder slag, 20% pure powder, the color is white, and there are occasionally white with dark red secondary powder slag, generally not easy to sell on the pick out and throw away, the volume ranges from 1 cm to 5 cm, the smallest is also called "face powder". Slowly load the nylon bag with a shovel, tie the mouth carefully out of the hole, and carry it home along the mountain road, the whole process is a manual work, very hard, dry for most of the day, sometimes need to bring dry food to eat rice in the cave.
The second "sieving powder", that is, screening out a fine and white powder, folk also known as "mixing tank". First of all, the mined powder ore is placed on the clean hard ground of its own yard, with a thick wooden stick or flat wood "slap" to beat hard, there are also crushed with stone bricks, after pressing the stone blocks, the remaining powder is mainly flour, shoveled with iron shovels into the prepared large mud tank, add half a cylinder of well water to settle for an hour, the general weight ratio of powder and well water is 1:3.5, about fifty pounds of powder slag, need 175 pounds of well water. Secondly, use a small shovel to stir clockwise, after ten minutes, the powder will be smoothly integrated into the water, the powder residue will sink into the bottom of the cylinder, and then use the small shovel to fish out the precipitated powder residue, the remaining powder in the tank is the powder; continue to precipitate for seven or eight minutes, and then use the water scoop to scoop out the upper half of the water into another mud tank to precipitate overnight, the remaining material in the original cylinder can be filtered by a sieve to inject part of the fine mud; the next morning the water on the top is very clear, the powder is all precipitated into fine mud, and the top floating is of superior quality." Cylinder top powder", at this time the ratio of water to powder is generally 1:3. Finally, scoop out the upper layer of water and continue to mix it evenly with a shovel for five minutes, leaving the locals with what the locals call a very fine and white powder "embryo rice".
The third "stereotype" is to hand mold the gluttonous powder. The mold used by the old craftsmen is the powder slag cut in the mud tank or on the mountain to make a groove of about 1 meter long, two feet wide, 5 cm deep, and the old cotton cloth or small baggage in the countryside is spread on it, so that the groove mold is ready; the powder "embryo rice" is poured into the groove mold, let stand for two hours, and the water in the "embryo rice" will seep into the powder slag through the cotton cloth, and now it can be fixed by hand; the cotton cloth is pocketed in all four corners, and after drying and solidifying, it becomes a large and white square gluttony powder block, and can also be kneaded into a column shape by hand like making steamed buns and dumplings. Now the sale is generally a strip of rao powder column, small 10 cm high, about 5 cm in diameter, the market price is generally 1.5-2.0 yuan each, sometimes the powder sellers will buy back the large "rao yu powder" squares, and then reprocessed into small squares, column-shaped sales; the finished products after the stereotype are stacked on the wooden board of the yard, air drying for four or five days, you can use the basket to sell on the market, Qixia rural Layue large set often see stalls selling "gluttonous powder", usually there are motorcycles riding baskets to walk the streets and alleys to sell.
One side of the water and soil nurtures one person, and the other side of the culture affects the other side. The production technique of "Gluttonous Powder" reflects the true portrayal of the lives of the people in the mining area in the northern part of Miaohou Town, and is also the crystallization of folk wisdom for hundreds of years. Luanjiazhuang, Dr. Li and other villagers over the age of 65, 80% of the young people have picked powder, in the 1980s, when the "Rao Bao Powder" flourished, a family workshop can mine two tons of powder, produce 800 kg of powder, keep it for their own use, most of the New Year's Festival to catch the market and sell, you can multi-part income to supplement the family. Entering the new century, with the shortage of high-quality fine mineral resources, social progress and the improvement of people's living standards, the number of people doing this craft is getting less and less, gradually drifting away, and is slowly disappearing, there are still some old "shou artists" who are sixty years away uphold the spirit of craftsmen, with feelings, with the original heart to chase dreams and poems and distant places, inheriting this craft left by their ancestors, silently adhering to it, inheriting conscience, and has now become a precious "rural memory", selected into the list of the sixth batch of intangible cultural heritage projects in Qixia City.
Lightning News reporter Liu Ming correspondent Fan Jun reported