Coffee, passion fruit and binnon sai hi

Source: People's Daily Overseas Edition

Photo (1): Iwakō and ansang family.

This newspaper reporter Qi Xin photographed

Picture (2): The Pu'er ethnic minority prays for the New Year with songs and dances.

Photo by Wei Yuliang

Figure (3): Pu'er ethnic minorities carry out New Year worship activities.

Photographed by Li Fan

Figure (4): Menglian Shenyu Festival catches fish at the scene.

Photo by Yang Lixian

Figure (5): Jinggu Flower Picking Songkran Festival.

(i)

Passion fruit is often referred to as passionflower. Pu'er local wild passion fruit is called "egg fruit". It is said that the vine blooms precisely, choosing around 10:30 a.m., and thousands of flowers bloom almost simultaneously in a few minutes.

Passion fruit is also known as the "passion fruit", which is to describe its unforgettable fruit aroma: rich, fiery, "unite" the charm of pomegranates, bananas, strawberries, lemons, mangoes, sour plums and many other fruits. Pu'er growers have another understanding of "enthusiasm": it can quickly bear fruit and bring rewards. The seedlings are planted in February and the fruits are picked in the summer, and people expect that it will not take more than 5 months.

Pu'er is not a traditional production area of passion fruit. Driven by young consumer groups, the demand in various places has rapidly expanded, and passion fruit has slowly caught fire in the local area. In local dishes, boiled chicken and boiled fish can be flavored with passion fruit, and it is fashionable to use it to make cold mixes and mix juices.

Wang Weiming and Xie Zhongxiang are now "fashionable fruit farmers". From the camp slope group of the civil affairs village of Ning'er Town, Ning'er County, Pu'er City, where they live on a motorcycle, in less than 10 minutes, they can see the connected orchards on the hillside.

Passion fruit orchards are a lot like vineyards. The fruit has an aggressive aroma from the bright green. When I visit Wang Weiming's house, my attention always turns back to the passion fruit in front of me: the hostess cuts the fresh fruit, gently sprinkles a spoonful of wild honey and then holds it in front of your eyes, and after eating one, I will hold another one, so that people have no courage to refuse. The Courtyard of the Hani ethnic group is clean and tidy. The couple made the 5 acres of tea garden enviable: no chemical fertilizer and no medicine, spring tea, autumn tea are all green industries. In 2003, his first child was born, and in the blink of an eye, he entered the Pu'er Vocational Education Center to study forestry. In front of her, the 10-year-old daughter snuggled up to her mother, carefully observing how her parents treated guests and talked about passion fruit.

Planting remains the family's core livelihood and future livelihood.

Wang Weiming was born in the 1970s. Farmers of this age once grew or still grow tea, buds, coffee, figs, guavas, and possibly eucalyptus, citrus and ginger. This phenomenon of diversified cultivation of each family is universal in the local area and is also a visual embodiment of the development of biodiversity society.

But he had never grown passion fruit before.

Ning'er Town is a must for the county town to pass through Jinggu. Since 2019, passion fruit has been vigorously introduced to Ning'er Town, which has convenient transportation, and has also integrated into the "combination of agriculture and tourism". In addition to passion fruit, you can also buy local small-flowered sticky corn and yellow-core sweet potatoes on the Internet, and when you enter the field, you can also see billboards welcoming picking. In the fragrance of passion fruit I asked a lot of questions about "passion fruit": the purchase price? market price? How much does it cost to place an order online? How well are their counterparts selling out of town? How much is a kilogram in Beijing and Shanghai? ...... I asked the west to ask, Wang Weiming and Xie Zhongxiang sat in front of me and compared and pondered and calculated, I think it was not clear to tie them together. At this time, it shows the shortcomings that local farmers urgently need to solve - in the face of new opportunities, they do not understand e-commerce, nor do they understand the consumer market of fashionable fruits.

(ii)

Pu'er is a demonstration area of national ethnic unity and progress. Here, we can not only realize that the consciousness of the Chinese national community has been deeply rooted in the hearts of the people, but also find that ethnic minority areas have begun to integrate into the new development pattern based on resource endowments and comparative advantages.

In recent years, the agricultural cultivation vegetation of Pu'er has undergone significant changes. In the impression, tea forests, rubber, sugar cane, eucalyptus forests, as well as medicinal herbs, flue-cured tobacco and rice paddies, coffee, passion fruit, lemon, avocado, nut cultivation began to appear on a large scale.

I was also looking for some niche coffee plantations that grew up independently in Pu'er. It is not uncommon for a well-established but professional manufacturer to supply both green beans and good-tasting baking. If passion fruit farmers only need to pay attention to planting and abundant production, then the coffee operators here must go further in the industrial chain, extending their worries all the way to influencing the consumption habits of distant places.

Guan Yong was very happy to come to see his "Manning Coffee" who drank coffee every day. High-altitude coffee plantations are not easy to reach. We drove around for a long time to reach the Heji group in Mangka Village, Mangxin Township, Menglian County. Muang Shin's neighbor Nao Fuk is also on my interview list for a long time, and it is a famous lemon-rich area in recent years. The processing workshops at the "Manning Coffee" plant are neat and orderly; the coffee plantations are surrounded by virgin forests, eucalyptus forests, bud valleys and sudden landslides. Multiple greens spread over the mountains, all the way across the border to the sky.

By the end of 2019, the coffee planting area in Pu'er City was nearly 800,000 mu, the output of coffee beans was 58,000 tons, and the comprehensive output value was 2.44 billion yuan. But China produces only a small fraction of the world's coffee. Therefore, after Yunnan small-grain coffee enters the global supply chain, it must also be compared with the traditional production areas of various countries. This has caused internet celebrity farming to often not sell well, so they have to find another way. Small grain coffee in Yunnan is grown in large areas along the warm valley south of 26° north latitude. In Pu'er, Lincang, Dehong and Baoshan, varieties cultivated over the years form unique flavors. Guan Yong supplies green beans as usual while directly providing fresh roasting to customers. On the micro-store, the order for roasted coffee beans 227 grams a small bag, that is, 0.5 pounds can be sent fresh. The tediousness and hardship of this can be imagined.

When I watched "Manning Coffee" in the mountains, I had not yet been to the passion fruit garden; then I chatted with Wang Weiming of Ninger, and I suddenly thought of Meng Lian's Guan Yong. Changes in the cultivation landscape and rapid iteration of trendy products are not a simple replacement process. In today's biodiversity-conserving world, extensive production methods are more constrained; what was once self-sufficient and self-sufficient is now synchronized with the remote market – you can think of this as experiencing another "straight pass". Going it alone is definitely no play. As a result, the more abundant the resources and the closer they are to the forefront of fashion, the stronger and more common the local desire for assistance and assistance.

(iii)

When I interviewed Passion Fruit Garden in Ning'er, I initially ignored Xie Zhongxiang, who was beside Wang Weiming. The two people are adjacent to each other, and their "identities" are different. Passion fruit has just been introduced as a new product to get rich, and people's attitudes are ambiguous. More than 600 peasant households were counted, and only more than 30 accepted, and the land was only more than 70 acres. At this time, it is really necessary for someone to "eat the crab first". Xie Zhongxiang is the director of the Village Affairs Supervision Committee and a member of the Communist Party. The solution that came to the village was to set up a cooperative to plant together and plant first. So Xie Zhongxiang is a demonstrator, and Wang Weiming is an imitator. Wang Weiming has an instinctive view of the connection between new varieties and getting rich. He carefully observed and looked carefully, felt that this matter was "well planted" and would not lose money, and made a judgment that he was confident in next year's harvest, so he immediately joined in.

This kind of plot and story can be heard and seen everywhere. After entering the second decade of the 21 st century, Ning'er, Menglian, and other places, like many parts of the country, are promoting the production mode of "party branches, leading enterprises, cooperatives, and peasant households." In addition to the field of agricultural production, ethnic minority areas have emerged in various public cultural products in many aspects of culture, education, health, human settlements, ecology and employment.

It was a lot of fun to watch a green coffee game deep in the mountains. You can see all kinds of processing plants, ranging from leading enterprises and professional cooperatives to family farms and large professional households. There are often unexpected newcomers who win the championship. In 2019, Menglian held its first "Coffee Green Bean Competition", which lasted for several weeks from the picking of coffee beans in the Menglian production area in the current season. There are 22 companies participating in the preliminary round, and the coffee beans can be divided into washed, sun-dried and honey treatment according to the processing method. The judges are from China, Britain, the United States, Australia and other countries; the growers who participated in the competition and won the prize came from Lahu, Dai, Wa and Han ethnic groups. Guan Yong's "Manning Coffee" washed beans have participated in the competition and been shortlisted for the award - Pu'er is a "national ethnic unity and progress to create a demonstration city", but the respect, dependence and affection between various ethnic groups are widely present in the details of all-encompassing social life, "fine" to people's habits; in the face of new challenges, it shows as a dynamic process of blending you have me and I have you.

(iv)

The Hui Village of Jingxin Township in Menglian County is inhabited by Dai, Lahu and Wa ethnic groups. The village also grows coffee, tea, sugar cane, sand kernels and macadamia nuts, and is also famous for its "Binnon Saihi".

There, there is a detail that is unforgettable.

There are 21 ethnic groups in Menglian, and they have also experienced the historical stage of national "straight through". The present day has certainly changed drastically compared to that era, but the "Binnon Sai Hi" has continued steadily. "Binnon Sai hi" comes from the Dai language, and other ethnic groups have similar words to describe it: the Lahu pronunciation is "pressing", and the Wa pronunciation is similar to "佤阿捏布佤何朋". They basically all point to the same expression: "friends who are not related by blood but are like relatives", that is, the way in which families of different nationalities spontaneously make friends and often inherit each other from generation to generation based on the needs of daily production and life.

Iwakō and Ansang greeted me in solemn and simple Dai costumes. They were all born and raised in the village. This is also the core area of "Binnon Sai Hi". If you look back, "Binnon Saihi" may have started with heavy farming at the time of planting seedlings and gradually expanded to all aspects of life. Born in 1972, Iwakō was promoted to a young monk at the age of 12. At that time, there were mostly rice paddies around, and there was a shortage of manpower during the planting season, so "Binnong Sai Hi" would take the initiative to come to help. This kind of relationship will be very magical when outsiders first hear about it. It is not introduced from an outside, nor does it originate from some kind of regulation; there is no particularly solemn worship ceremony, but it can be interrupted from generation to generation. The help needed by different farmers has long been known to each other, and then "no need to call to come." The accumulation of a long time constitutes a self-generated, grass-roots and active living environment.

There are many "Binnong Saihi" in the Iwakō and AnXiang families, and the oldest lahu tribe, the Binnong Saihi, lasted for several generations.

Dai women are known for their ability to run the family. We sat around the small table of the Dai family, mostly the hostess An Xiang was speaking. From grandfather to father to the present, the Lahu people who are about the same age as Iwaku and An Xiang are called Zahai. Zahai had just arrived, and he sat at the same table drinking wine and tea, this time to discuss how to build a fish pond on the mountain.

Where is Zahai's home? Separated by rice paddies and fish ponds, Ann points to the farthest, highest mountain. It now takes an hour to drive, but it took half a day to go down the mountain barefoot.

I asked a question at the end of the conversation: After recognizing "Binnong Sai Hi", will I not recognize it in the future?

I still remember Ansang's expression, tone, and tone of voice as I write the manuscript—why did I ask the question: "No!" Why don't you recognize it?"

I was touched by the clarity, sincerity and confidence that flashed in An Xiang's words. The essence of "Binnon Sai Hi" is derived from the needs of production, life and cooperation based on trust. This kind of communication, goodwill, voluntariness and consensus is the principle of life shared by this multi-ethnic settlement, and it also creates a public environment and efficiency that can be seen by each other. I interviewed Xie Zhongxiang of "Eat Crab First" in Ning'er Town: Is there anything in return for taking the lead in demonstration? For example, in the sales season, can passion fruit sell more and more expensive? Everyone present shook their heads in unison: No, at the same price as everyone—the atmosphere of mutual assistance, equally chivalrous and natural.

Everything Pu'er sees makes people realize that unity is not simply equivalent to doing good deeds and good deeds, nor is it just about getting rid of poverty and getting rich; unity is a worldview and method facing challenges, and it has also become the internal mechanism of China's social development through the continuous identification and practice of countless individuals.

……

My interviews in Pu'er have had an impact that continues to this day. After returning to Beijing, I did one thing, keeping in touch with the orchards and coffee gardens I visited for a long time, and also frequently mailing passion fruit, yellow core sweet potatoes, honey, vanilla and small grain coffee. One of the purposes was to track the level of immersion in the internet age; but more often than not, I became part of them. I began to accept Pu'er coffee, and through the promotion platform of Ning'er Town, I introduced Wang Weiming and Xie Zhongxiang's passion fruit to the people around me. Not only do people think I'm "fashionable", but I can proudly say which orchard the recommended fruit came from, and even describe the day and who picked it!

National unity has melted into the blood of all ethnic groups in Pu'er, and I walked into them as if I had become one of them.