Overlooking the art warehouse in Willow Shade Town. Profile picture
The children were playing. Profile picture
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Under the transformation of teachers and students of the Sichuan Academy of Fine Arts, Dongsheng Village, Liuyin Town, Beibei District, Chongqing City, has changed from a small mountain village with dilapidated houses and sparsely populated people in the past to a punch card with artistic charm. This kind of artistic transformation not only preserves the traditional style of the village, but also explores more diverse paths to help rural revitalization.
People who come to Dongsheng Village, Liuyin Town, Beibei District, Chongqing for the first time will be attracted by the unique artistic sense here. Chrysanthemums flutter in the wind on the side of the road, and the white-walled dewa houses are scattered, and the ploughs, rakes and stone mills dot the front and back of the houses, full of pastoral taste.
A few years ago, however, it was just an overgrown hollow village. Nowadays, Dongsheng Village has changed its appearance and has become a punch card place that many people come to visit.
Using local materials, the village has a sense of art
In Dongsheng Village in 2018, the houses are dilapidated and sparsely populated, and most of the elderly and children stay at home. As soon as Wang Tianxiang, executive vice president of the Institute of Art and Rural Studies of sichuan academy of fine arts, came, it became the news in the village.
Teachers and students carry drawing boards and cameras and walk around the village. There were old earthen walls and wooden windows everywhere, and they couldn't see enough. Windmills, stone mills, wooden plows... They paid for the old objects and put them back in front of the villagers' houses.
"It's useless." The villagers muttered, "But it's really nice." ”
Originally, Wang Tianxiang was invited to design a rural revitalization plan for Dongsheng Village, and worked with teachers and students to conduct "immersive" research to understand the history, style and geographical and geological conditions of the village. They decided to design the renovation plan according to the original texture of the village, using local materials as much as possible and pursuing the original taste.
After investigation, they came to the village again with the construction team. The idle space in the home of villager Zhao Chaohui was converted into a stage; in a corner of the villagers' Gu Liehe home, the team demolished the wall and added windows to pave the floor tiles to build an elegant bookhouse; the wasteland where the villagers stopped to chat when they walked around, which was widened, beautified and equipped with seats... Slowly, new rural public spaces took shape.
After walking through a starry sky art trail, you come to the Yangjiaba courtyard. It was originally an ordinary farmyard with 37 peasant families. With the theme of "Willow", the team built six areas here, including the Farming Culture Park, the Reception Center, the Children's Paradise, the Wangqu Bookstore, the Rest and Accommodation, and the Straw Garden. The stone and wood used in the building are all from the materials of demolition, and the style is integrated with the old village house.
Dongsheng Village has changed, but it seems that it has not changed.
Today, the farmers of Yangjiaba still live here, and their lives and production have not been affected in any way. Visitors swim in the public spaces and experience the beauty of local art and village life.
"Our village has become beautiful." Villager Wang Xibin now likes to walk around the village, and the beautiful scenery is not enough.
The popularity is more vigorous, and young people return to their hometowns to develop
According to preliminary statistics, Dongsheng Village will receive more than 20,000 tourists in 2021. Tourists are attracted by the scenery created by Dongsheng Village according to the actual situation of the village, many of which retain the place where the villagers originally worked and lived.
Yu Yan's home is one of them. The two-storey farmhouse looks ordinary, but the small courtyard in front of the door is fascinating. Half of the yard was made into flower beds, full of flowers and plants. Yu Yan is a young girl who returned to the village from the city in 2020 and used her leisure time to build this flower garden.
"Dongsheng Village is like a big park, and our house should be more worthy of such a beautiful village." She said that Dongsheng Village has become more and more beautiful after artistic transformation, and its popularity has also increased. Now, she has quit her job in the main urban area of Chongqing and returned to the village to work as a receptionist for the research team. "The reception team ranges from elementary school students to university students, and there are several groups every day during the holidays." Yu Yan said.
The young people who return to the village are not just Yu Yan.
"My family kept urging me to come back, saying that there were a lot of tourists in the village." Chen Jing, 29, who had been working as a sales agent in the city before, returned to the village in April last year to set up a farm.
"The farmhouse in Dongsheng Village has characteristics, the placement of tables and chairs, and the transformation of the shape of the house are exquisite." Chen Jing said that the village cadres provided a lot of plans and appearance references, and after the renovation, the old house was renewed.
"Now as long as it doesn't rain, there are nearly 10 tables of guests every day, and the net income is more than 30,000 yuan per month." Chen Jing said that the farm is ready to expand its scale and upgrade its decoration to adapt to the increasingly prosperous business.
"The key to rural revitalization lies in people, and the beautification of the countryside has attracted popularity, and also provided soil and space for young people to return to their hometowns for development." The vast number of villagers should also participate in it and form a sense of ownership. He Bo, secretary of the party committee of Liuyin Town, said that taking the opportunity of artistic transformation, the village implemented a point reward system to encourage villagers to participate in public area cleaning, volunteer service, and strive to do good people and good deeds. Now the villagers have the initiative to take care of the public space of the village, and they have a considerable degree of recognition for the development of the village. ”
Art goes to the countryside to explore the path of integrated development
"When art goes to the countryside, it is impossible to try it out." Wang Tianxiang said frankly that they have also gone through many detours.
"Form and practicality, rural revitalization projects must take into account both aspects." Wang Tianxiang said that they originally designed a space for chatting and deliberating, but the wall was too high to cause the space to be gray and cramped, and the villagers used it as a decoration. Another time, they used broken tiles to repair the cracked courtyard dam for the villagers, and put together a colorful tree, but the homeowner asked for rework: "When it rains, it is very slippery, and people fall." The small porcelain pieces are still easy to fall off, not as good as the original cement floor. "We crossed the river by feeling the stones in practice and slowly grew up." Wang Tianxiang sighed.
With the help of local natural scenery, folklore resources and historical sites, the team also helped Dongsheng Village develop an art research industry. Develop rural study courses such as "Earth Magician" and "Little Collector" based on local art landscape materials. Dongsheng Village on weekends has become a paradise for children to feel nature and stimulate creativity.
Wang Tianxiang said that in recent years, in Dongsheng Village, more than a thousand teachers and students of the Sichuan Academy of Fine Arts have left their footprints and works, exploring the integrated development path of "agriculture + tourism + art + learning", hoping to help the development of more rural areas in the future.
Draft: Zhang Fangman
Wang Tianxiang, initiator of the "Liuyin Project":
Nourished from the countryside
Liuyin Town, Beibei District, Chongqing, is an ordinary village on the outskirts of the city. I am a Liuyin native and now teach at the Sichuan Academy of Fine Arts. For many years, I have always had a simple wish, that is, one day, I will return to my hometown to do something practical for the villagers and improve their lives.
In 2018, at the invitation of the Liuyin Town Government, I began to promote the "Liuyin Project" of exploring art to participate in rural transformation. I compiled the plan for the creation of a beautiful rural demonstration village in Dongsheng Village, organized an international workshop in Liuyin Town, and selected Wangjiawan, which has retained the ancestral hall for more than 300 years, as the creative site. I am involved in this artistic transformation as a researcher in my hometown.
The "China Rural Aesthetic Education Action Plan" has been launched for three consecutive years based on Liuyin Town, and more than 30 art projects have been gradually launched. Art courtyards, art roads, art installations... The fields and courtyard houses are full of strong artistic atmosphere. Today, Dongsheng Village has been awarded the titles of China's Beautiful Leisure Village and National Forest Village.
I, together with the teachers and students involved in the project, built the former residence of the school in the village into a village bookhouse, converted the abandoned warehouse into an art warehouse, founded the Liuyin Canal Cultural Exhibition Hall, and built the "Star Art Museum" for the children in the village. After participating in the project, one of my students wrote in the paper: "My countryside is silent, she cultivated me, she also looked at me, I was determined for the first time and then went back to the direction..." Only when a group of young students who love the countryside and understand the countryside thrive, can rural revitalization accumulate more strength.
In the winter of 2018, a villager from Dongsheng Village shook my hand after the end of the Light and Music International Workshop project and said, "I look forward to your frequent visits." "I realized that our arrival made this small mountain village even more popular. At a festival in 2019, the courtyard dam in Wangjiawan was very lively, and the villagers from other places came back one after another, and performances such as lion dances and rice songs and dances were very popular; in the 2020 Liuyin New Year Courtyard Dam Art Festival, villagers gathered in the art warehouse, rehearsed their own cultural programs, and danced around the campfire at night, with smiles on their faces.
With the deepening of artistic transformation, Liuyin Town has become more and more beautiful, more and more tourists, and young people who work outside the home have begun to return to their hometowns. In 2021, Liuyin Town received more than 100,000 tourists.
When more and more villagers are willing to return to their hometowns, when generations of young students are willing to look back, I think we can also get more nourishment from the soil.
(Compiled by Wang Xinyue, a reporter of this newspaper)
People's Daily (2022-02-24 11th edition)