Reporter | Jiang Zhan
Edit | Yan Zhijun
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At the end of the year, all localities and major brands are preparing souvenirs and hollowing out their minds. Jiangcun's souvenirs are ready-made, but they are extremely weighty - Fei Xiaotong's two classic works "Native China" and "Jiangcun Economy" are packaged in gift boxes, and then covered with a translucent frosted packaging film, on which Fei Xiaotong's inscription "Each is beautiful, the beauty of beauty, the beauty of beauty, the world is the same.".
Jiangcun is a village in southern Jiangsu written by Fei Xiaotong, based on the Kaixian Bow Village in Qidu Town, Wujiang, Jiangsu Province. Jiangcun is not an administratively specific village name, which was already reflected in the English name of the original edition of Gangchon Economy - A Field Study of Country Life in the Yangtze Valley. Jiangcun refers to the villages in the Yangtze River Basin, and Fei Xiaotong's Jiangcun is a microcosm of the Jiangnan countryside.
In 1936, at the age of 26, Fei Xiaotong was injured and lost his wife in the Dayao Mountain area of Guangxi Province, and returned home to recuperate, thus slowly beginning the fieldwork in his hometown in southern Jiangsu.
Fei Xiaotong was originally from Wujiang, but he came to Kaixian Bow Village because of his sister Fei Dasheng, a famous silk expert in China, who can be called the modern "Zodiac". Kaixian Bow Village attracted her because of "Sangzi Wanjia, cocoons everywhere".
Because of Fei Xiaotong, Kaixian Bow Village is destined not to be an ordinary village, and its prefix is "China". Under the highway "Seven Capitals", you can see the archway erected at the mouth of the village in a few minutes, and the words "China Jiangcun" are written on it. Every year, a large number of experts, scholars, and students in related industries such as sociology, anthropology, and economics visit the village. At the same time as this prosperity, the area where Jiangcun is located is the last 23 kilometers of undeveloped along Taihu Lake. The pristine ecological and social status, on the other hand, also means that it is not easy to be easily developed.
A small leap forward in rural revitalization
In winter, Jiangcun, like most villages in China, has withered plants and barren farmland, waiting for spring ploughing; like a full bow string and named "Kaixin Bow Village", the Xiaoqing River flows quietly and slowly; farmers have hung sausages and pork head meat, and the houses have made meat balls and fragrant vegetables - this unique green vegetable of Wujiang is a must-have for every meal, and when it goes out of this area, it will never be eaten again.
There is a café in the village, the young man can make a good hand-brewed coffee, and the young man will not feel too confused when he comes back. The adjacent auditorium is now the "Gangchon Synergy Center", and the color of the door is very colorful. Inside is the restaurant, library, but also the reference room, not only has a full range of Books related to Fei Xiaotong and rural construction, there are also stacked papers on the chest of drawers, all of which are copies of papers related to Jiangcun, Fei Xiaotong, and rural revitalization found by the "special class" to major colleges and universities in China, providing a review for those who come to participate in the "Village Chiefs Forum" and academic seminars.
The full name of the "special class" is "China Jiangcun Project Special Class", which is composed of 8 staff members in Qidu Town. The members of the special class should learn etiquette, be familiar with Fei Xiaotong's works, and be able to be the docent of the Fei Xiaotong Jiangcun Memorial Hall, and a village has cultural messengers, which is also what makes Jiangcun different from other villages.
"Because of the particularity of the village, if you don't do well, tens of thousands of scholars will scold you." While feeling a lot of pressure, Zhang Wenxuan also felt, "Because of the special, our starting point is the goal of others, which makes people very motivated." ”
In 2019, Zhang Wenxuan, a slash youth who is creating a social circle of acquaintances in Wujiangnan, accompanied the leader to Jiangcun to investigate, and he soon found that Jiangcun has a complete ecological texture, farmers grow water eight immortals and fragrant vegetables; the spacing between houses is small, it is a traditional Jiangnan alley, full of realistic experience. While lamenting the village with a high starting point, he also found that in addition to meetings, there was not even a place to stop and eat in the village. Soon, Zhang Wenxuan, who served as Jiangcun's consultant, built the Gangchon club, which consisted of cafes, auditoriums and banquets at Fei's hometown.
Fei Laojia's banquet is two tables of "private dishes", and the 71-year-old chef Yao Hugen is in charge of the spoon, because in the past, Fei Xiaotong ate the dishes made by his mother-in-law. In his memory, Fei Lao's taste is sweet, he likes to eat plum vegetables and button meat, and lamb tripe white likes white roast, and can drink soup.
With coffee, food, linking to more people, and extending the stay time of foreign visitors from at least 30 minutes to 3 hours, this is a small leap forward in the construction of Jiangcun.
There are many ways to revitalize the countryside. Some people say that homestays are the best grasp, and some people use the power of capital and investment promotion, but there is no fixed methodology for rural construction, and it is the charm of rural construction according to local conditions.
Fei Xiaotong and Emura Koshuzai
In 1996, at the 62nd Annual Meeting of the International Library Association, Fei Xiaotong gave a lecture on "From Small Bookstores to The World's New Library", which was later included in "Fei Xiaotong's Complete Works Volume 15 (1995-1996)".
Fei Lao mentioned: "The rise of rural libraries in townships and towns has a bright future. I am convinced that it will greatly accelerate the pace of regional economic and cultural development. ”
"The formation of the pattern of Chinese cultural pluralism and integration certainly has its economic, political, social and cultural factors, and the dissemination and exchange of information obviously plays an important role in linking."
Because of this opportunity, after jiangcun club, Zhang Wenxuan planned the "Jiangcun Bookshelf Plan", and in 2022, he released the "Jiangcun Little Bookstore", which was extracted from the words written by Fei Lao.
Yao Fukun, a peasant professor who had received Fei Xiaotong 26 times, exchanged books with representatives of bookstores such as Huzhou Niuzhai Bookstore and Changzhou Qiubai Bookstore mingde museum in the "Taihu Lake City Belt". Jiangcun donated the book "Native China", Niuzhai Bookstore prepared "Huzhou Biography", which is a spiritual transmission of a city; Qiubai Bookstore prepared "Autumn White Hua", Qu Qiubai said "Autumn White Hua, Autumn White Hua, you have me, I have you" also applies to Jiangcun and other cities.
Fei Xiaotong has two chapters on "writing" in "Native China". He said: "The local society, by and large, is a society without 'words' ... But when the vernacular grassroots of Chinese society changed, the writing could go to the countryside. In Zhang Wenxuan's view, Jiangcun is the starting point of Mr. Fei Xiaotong's academic research on rural issues in China, through the bookshelf, constantly connecting the city and the countryside, the elderly and children, villagers and visitors, and finally forming a cultural rural construction event and knowledge dissemination.
"Next is the winter vacation, we will plan activities, let the children learn the Economy of Jiangcun independently, make a PPT, and then use their own language to tell their parents." Zhang Wenxuan revealed his next plan.
"It may not be books on the shelves, but it can also be greens." In his view, "bookshelf" is actually a broad term, carrying not necessarily a specific physical book, but also a projection of various cultures.
"Cultural exchange activities may not be on land, but can they be in Xiaoqinghe and Changyang?" According to Lu Shun, the founder of Niuzhai Bookstore, Jiangcun and Huzhou have many similarities and differences, and through "reading" the basic skills of this person, let the countryside flow, which is the meaning of the small bookstore.
Art is integrated into rural life
At the same time as the release of the "Gangchon Bookshelf", the "Gangchon Art Residency Program" was also launched at the end of last year. Five artists and an architect spent two months in the village, interacting with the villagers and the public through their own perspectives and through the form of art.
The work "Gangcun Collection" at the entrance of the café was composed by artist Yi Lian collecting old brick installations from abandoned buildings. Together with the local villagers, he wrapped a layer of transparent resin around the bricks, which looked clean and tidy. The side is fitted with labels similar to nameplates, and the title of each brick is a key word extracted from Fei Xiaotong's "Gangchon Economy".
In an abandoned factory building of the silk reeling factory, there are several pieces of Xu David's "Book Shelf Project", which is also the most worked by the artists in residence, and Miao Dawei, the head of Jiangcun Special Class, described him as "playing hi". The artist collected old tree roots, tree stumps, drawers and other idle items as containers on the spot, and then extracted some of the pages of "Native China" and painted the landscapes, people, plants, animals and other daily scenes of Shangjiang Village in black ink.
On the second floor is the "Story of Jiangcun" by Jian Guorong, a young artist born in 1996, and the broken glass with the key sentences in "Native China" is strung together into a small Qinghe River, "meandering" on the ground, and he tries to create a way to re-understand the culture and history of Jiangcun.
Song Xi's "Coming to My World: The Book of Light" is located on the lawn outside the Gangmura club, and he installs four feet under the simple house, showing the state of a moving house, connecting home and time, and in the middle of the house is a glowing book. The hometown of the north and the south where they reside, the outside world and the inner home, life and creation, when things appear multiple levels, the best state, in fact, Fei lao has long said: beauty and commonality.
Shandong-born Qi Wenwen had read Fei Xiaotong's works more than a decade ago, and when he was in the village described in the book, he felt as wonderful as a dream suddenly appearing in the real world. He presents the traditional pastoral life scene of the land of fish and rice with a simple art form painted on the wall.
When we talk about rural revitalization, most of the time the context is a hollow village that is left unattended. Kaixian Bow Village is obviously not, it and the other 3 natural villages have a total of 747 households, a population of about 2800, is a dense village. At the same time, because it is located in the Taihu Lake basin in southern Jiangsu, it is a holy place for ingredients including fish, shrimp, crabs and eight immortals, and the people's lives are rich. The re-revitalization of Gangchon is on another level. Art stationed in the village is nothing new, "land art" is just popular, but the real rural operator is not to catch up with the trend. There is no special open-string bow village in terms of landform, and it is not suitable for land art. Zhang Wenxuan chooses a smaller entrance to make the countryside a place where you can read and touch, and the people will not feel that art is high.
This also makes deputy mayor Xu Feifei very excited, in her view, "community renewal" is a small concept of rural revitalization, not to install a massage chair in the street park, nor to paint the façade of the house once and finish it. Instead, while satisfying reading and appreciating art, it also takes into account the functions of community renewal and cultural tourism, so that the library can become a public art project that can be read. Compared with those terriers that are quickly forgotten, Fei Xiaotong's IP is undoubtedly permanent, and it is still worth chewing and using until now.
Image source: Visual China, provided by the brand