In the cultural square of Songxi County, there are three relief landscape walls recording the three treasures of Songxi: Zhanlu Sword, Jiulong Kiln and Songxi Printmaking.
Video version of this article: Liu Junyan aerial photography records Songxi County, Fujian Province, China
There are thousands of counties and cities across the country, and they can stand out in the only hundred or so commodity categories and do the leading role, which is inevitably due to the competition of local craftsmen and leaders in the commercial sea.
In the case of the sword industry, this is a traditional craft that is unpopular and difficult to develop out of thin air without historical facts. The sword casting master Ou Yezi has left a rich legacy for Longquan and Songxi,
Ou Yezi and his son-in-law Gan forged three famous swords for King Chu Zhao in Longquan: Tai'a, Gongbu, and Longyuan, and before that, he also forged five famous swords for Yue Wang Yunchang in Songxi: Chun Jun, Fish Gut, Sheng Evil, Ju Que, and Zhan Lu.
From this point of view, Longquan and Songxi were not distinguished in the origin of the sword casting, but as far as the result was concerned, they had taken two different paths.
Songxi's sword casting industry was awakened in early 1985, when Li Dachong, a Chinese-American and martial artist, saw the record of Zhan Lu's sword from the book, so he wrote to the Fujian branch of the China Light Industry Import and Export Company to ask if he could buy the Zhan Lu sword.
This overseas letter was transferred to the Songxi Songyuan Town Economic Association, and it contacted the Iron Society to try to restore the sword casting technology of Zhan lu.
Among the blacksmiths of the society, there was an immigrant named Yang Zhentiao, who, after consulting a large amount of information, finally restored a sword of Zhan Lu that was cut like mud and blown by the wind at the end of the year.
The following year, Fujian Daily published the news, which attracted follow-up reports from dozens of domestic and foreign media such as People's Daily, and Songxi Zhanlujian's industry also became a hit. With the restoration of the Zhanlu sword, more than a dozen sword factories have emerged in Songxi County.
Rubbing the fame of Zhanlu, Songxi's sword factories have been brilliant for a short time, but now they have disappeared from the commercial sea, but Songxi Zhanlu Sword Factory still holds this trademark in its hands and operates the high-end sword market with the progress of developing one model per quarter.
Compared with Songxi, the neighboring Zhejiang Longquan has developed the sword industry with great success, and its sword industry has achieved an output value of tens of billions, while the sword industry in Songxi has reached millions of yuan. Now that the word "Zhanlu" in Songxi has begun to try to open up a breakthrough road from the perspective of tourism, the sword industry can no longer compete with Longquan on the same track.
In contrast, the modern printmaking has won Songxi the reputation of "the hometown of Chinese folk printmaking", thanks to the extraordinary efforts and innovation of dozens of local key authors and thousands of printmaking enthusiasts.
In the last episode of Songxi, I specifically mentioned the most famous ancient bridge in the local area, the Wufu Corridor Bridge in Weitian County, so I also took a special ride to visit.
Wufu Corridor Bridge was built in the ninth year of Ming Yongle (1411), rebuilt during the Ming Orthodox, Qing Xianfeng and Guangxu years, although it has been abandoned several times, it still retains its original style, and is the longest flat-beam wooden bridge in Fujian
Viewing from the east bridge is the best angle, and its scale and the sound of surging water are quite shocking.
The word Wufu is derived from the Book of Books, referring to "longevity, preciousness, kangning, good virtue and good death", the two ends of the bridge are archway-style stone arches, and on each side is a couplet with a small stone lion sitting on the top, "An Lan becomes a pillar, Li Ji shengzhou public opinion", and the horizontal criticism of "Feng Qing Tan Dao", expressing the important role of Wufu Bridge in that year.
The top of the arch on both sides is a miniature painted stone statue of eight immortals, and what is valuable is that these two sets of stone statues are not de-molded processes, but the sculptors have specially carved two sets of stone statues with drawings, and the careful comparison is slightly different.
What is even more amazing is the more than 700 paintings painted on the figurines inside, each of which records a history or folk story, making people feel as if they have passed through the time tunnel and feel the smile of the ancients at each node.
Rather than calling it a covered bridge to shelter the wind and rain, it is better to call it a cultural corridor for people to talk about the past and the present
Whether it is windy or rainy, people can walk on the green brick pavement or sit on both sides of the covered bridge, from the small portholes to see the greenery of the mountains, from the gaps in the baffles to taste the babbling of the water, it is not comfortable.
In the center of the bridge rises a pavilion with heavy eaves and angles, so that the appearance of the bridge is full of layering, the interior of the pavilion is like a huge bathtub, and the bottom of the basin is painted with a painting of double dragon play beads, indicating that you have reached the middle of the river.
According to the "Songxi County Chronicle", "if there is no beam in sichuan, the government will not be repaired", and at that time, the construction of bridges was already used as a criterion for evaluating official performance. In the minds of the people, the construction of bridges is even more an act of "praising the peasants in the wild and singing folk songs in the city" to accumulate virtue. Compared with Weitian Town, what it has done in this regard is extremely outstanding.
I don't know if you have ever seen such a plant, its scientific name is Roselle, and there is a saying "Sudan Red", I have only seen it in the market of Pine Creek.
I care about it because I worked for a few years in Sudan, where it originated in North Africa, where people dried the flowers and drank them in sugar, which was sweet and sour, and tasted similar to the sour plum soup we often drink.
But I don't know what people in China use to pluck its flower bones for, I have never seen such a sale in Sudan, I don't know if it is a different variety or some other reason, friends who know can share it with you in the message room.