Peninsula all-media reporter Li Xiaozhe correspondent Zhang Tao
On January 6, the winter sun shone warmly on the home of Yu Zhiqi, an incense maker in Yunqiao Village, Tongji New Economic Zone, Jimo District. Walking into the courtyard of Yu Zhiqi's home, a burst of fragrance came to the face, and Yu Zhiqizheng and his wife were busy making the latest batch of incense for pilgrims. With the Spring Festival approaching, Yunqiao Village, which has a history of more than 300 years of incense making, once again ushered in the busiest season of the year.
Local villagers take advantage of the good weather to seize production, busy making incense and drying incense, supplying the Spring Festival market, and ensuring that orders are completed on schedule. Yunqiao Village is a famous "incense-making village", in 2015, the incense-making process of Yunqiao Village was listed as Qingdao's municipal intangible cultural heritage, known as "incense-making village". At its peak, there were more than 100 villagers making incense in the village, but with the reduction of market demand and the rise of mechanized incense making, there are only a few villagers who still use ancient methods to make incense by hand.
The 60-year-old Yu Zhiqi has been making incense for more than 40 years and is a deeply experienced incense maker in Yunqiao Village. From the age of 15, he began to learn the art of making incense with his father and children, and experienced the change of being a husband and a father, and the only thing that has not changed is the work of making incense by hand at home. Every winter to the beginning of the spring, it is the peak season for the production of Yunqiao incense, and it is also the busiest time for Yu Zhiqi to take over the craft of making incense from his father and continue to develop into today's family workshop.
Yu Zhiqi introduced that the main raw materials for making incense are wood chips, elm bark, peanut peels and other flammable substances, beat the raw materials into powder, add spices, pigments, etc., stir evenly with hot water, and then put into a special machine, extruded through the output port covered with holes, and then dried. The grade of incense is distinguished according to the spices added (plant spices, chemical spices, etc.), and some high-grade incense sticks are printed on it. From raw material procurement to processing and production to finished product packaging, the production technology of Yunqiao incense has a total of 8 processes, including sticky incense, sun incense, wrapped incense, dyeing incense and so on. The whole process seems simple but cumbersome, and it requires a lot of patience. Yu Zhiqi said: "My product has maintained this quality for decades, as long as it is made, it can be sold, and then we are the intangible cultural heritage of Qingdao City, which is very prosperous." My clients are very fixed. This year to pull incense, and then order next year's goods. ”
At the home of villager Yu Jianbo, several women set up a stove in a large house, sat on a matza and chatted about the sky while packaging freshly made incense, and did not feel the urgency in the factory in their laughter. Yu Jianbo said that the workers here are all villagers in the village, and they will come to make incense and package incense every New Year's Pass, and they can make money sitting on the maza in front of their homes. "Before the Spring Festival is the peak season, sales have doubled several times than usual. No, just now a customer in Qingdao Licun pulled away two truckloads of goods. He also said that two trucks of (incense) goods were needed before the New Year," Yu Jianbo said with a smile.