It's another year of green grass, and the century-old pear garden is beautiful. On April 17, the reporter and his party went to Shichuan, an ancient town known as the "Xanadu Pear Garden" in the northeast of Lanzhou, where China's largest 10,000-mu pear orchard is located. After the Qingming Dynasty, the Shichuan Ancient Pear Garden entered the blooming period, and Shichuan was snow-white in April. With the increasing popularity of rural tourism, more and more tourists come to visit, tourists in the "century-old pear garden" style at the same time, but also gradually formed a consumption gathering, some local fruit farmers also began to transform into service personnel, to achieve "change the countryside into a tourist village, change agriculture into tourism", the income increased significantly. According to statistics, the average annual ewha festival can drive 2,000 people to work, and the per capita income is about 3,000 yuan per month. It has successfully held the 16th Cultural Tourism Festival, achieved a comprehensive tourism income of nearly 380 million yuan, and the century-old Pear Garden has paved the way to a well-off society in an all-round way, and its success has also provided experience for other regions to implement the comprehensive revitalization of rural areas.
Bring together multiple forces
"Rescue" protection of ancient pear trees
These centuries-old trees, which carry local memories and local contexts, were almost "abandoned" in those years. For a long time, the pear market was oversupplied, and it went downhill, "a year is not as good as a year, like sitting on a slide!" "Coupled with the long age and low yield of ancient pear trees, the planting efficiency is constantly declining, and many fruit farmers have begun to abandon ancient trees, or even simply saw down as wood." In order to protect these ancient pear trees, the local government has protected the ancient pear trees through a variety of measures, signed ancient pear tree management agreements with more than 1760 farmers and farm operators, established a collective management company, and established a moderate commercial operation enterprise conducive to the participation of villagers and the protection of pear orchards. Establish a board of directors and a shareholders' meeting, and clarify the rules of procedure. According to the resource input and labor payment, the distribution plan is determined; special funds are set up, sufficient development funds are retained, and the secondary distribution is improved; with dialectical thinking and long-term vision, further stand on the position of the people, mobilize the enthusiasm of all parties, take the collective economy as the leading, and absorb the joint participation of various economic sectors. The Lanzhou Municipal People's Congress has also formulated a local regulation, the Regulations on the Protection of Ancient Pear Trees in Shichuan, Lanzhou City.
Jump out of an adaptation
The road to comprehensive well-off for their own development
Today, relying on 10,000 acres of pear orchards, the people of Shichuan live a well-off life that they yearn for. Here the roads are smooth, the village is neat, the front and back of the house are green and fragrant, and the faces of the villagers who come and go are full of comfortable smiles. In recent years, they have combined the town history culture and pear culture, and built cultural museums and other attractions on the basis of the "Century-old Pear Garden". At present, a modern agricultural demonstration base integrating sightseeing and rural tourism has been formed.
With the deepening of rural revitalization, Shichuan will pay more attention to digging deep into its own comparative advantages, continuously deepening local industries, stretching industrial chains, promoting the structural reform of the agricultural supply side, and gradually moving towards agricultural modernization suitable for itself, and forging a comprehensive well-off road that adapts to its own development. In fact, the most fascinating time for the scenery of Shichuan is not only in the spring when the pear blossoms are in full bloom. Instead, it is the autumn of the harvest, when you can enjoy the wind and the sun, see the leafy fruit trees, smell the fragrant fruit and the fragrance of the earth, and listen to the insects. In this beautiful season, it can not only stimulate the rural tourism market, but also make pear farmers drum up their pockets.
The Tree King is ruled by the Tree Queen
"The World's First Ancient Pear Garden"
Shichuan grows pears almost every family, takes this as a profession, and also takes pleasure in it. Continuous pear orchards cover an area of more than 12,000 acres, most of the trees are more than three hundred years old, these pear trees record the local historical rings, but also represent the hometown of the locals, in the memory of many people, is a piece of lingering warm nostalgia. Behind this nostalgia, there are many hidden ecological secrets.
The reason why the 10,000-acre ancient pear garden is called "the world's first ancient pear garden" is precisely because of these two long-established trees. In 2005, relevant experts, enterprises and people from all walks of life in Gaolan County carefully searched in the 10,000-mu pear garden according to the records of Wei's family tree, and selected two winter fruit pear trees with a long age of 438 years old, lush foliage and the highest yield, and named them "Tree King" and "Queen of trees" respectively. The Tree King Tree Queen is located in a pear orchard 500 meters north of Shichuan Louzi Street. The two trees are less than 50 meters apart and belong to the oldest park in Shichuan. The canopy behind the tree is tall and open, planted in the Ming Jiajing period (1577), the diameter of the tree is 4.2 meters, the crown width is about 15 meters, the height of the tree is 11 meters, and the annual fruit yield is still maintained at more than 2000 kg. The Tree King is a winter fruit pear tree, and behind the tree is a soft pear tree.
"Heavenly handle" technique
Inherit farming culture
Everyone may be curious when you see the name "Heavenly Handle Style", what does this mean? In fact, the "heavenly handle" technique is a pear garden management and protection technique developed with the planting of pear trees, and it is also the accumulation and crystallization of advanced experience in agricultural production for more than 300 years. A mature and fruitful pear tree will be at least six or seven meters, so pollination and picking of pears is a very difficult task. Pear tree climbing is not easy, and the "sky handle" is such a profession that can climb the ladder. Since the Ming and Qing dynasties, the "Tianchang style" will step on the ladder to shuttle through the branches of pear trees, in order to maintain the pear trees and ensure the harvest in autumn, the "Tianchang style" is not only a manual work, but also a highly technical work. Spring and autumn are the busiest seasons of the "tianzhi type", and the fruit farmers will put the ladder slightly obliquely on the stronger and thicker branches to form a scaffold, and the "tianzhi" will climb up the pole and go to the treetops to pollinate or pick fruit. Sometimes, the "sky handle" has to go up to a position higher than the pole to pick, which makes people look scared. It is precisely because of this that in 2008, the "Tianzhi style" technique was included in the provincial intangible cultural heritage protection project.
Inheritance of ancient grafting
Promote advanced technologies
I don't know if you have found another strange phenomenon, the ancient pear trees in Shichuan are thick and narrow, and there is a clear dividing line in the middle. This is actually the result of grafting, Shichuan fruit farmers graft winter fruit pear, perfume pear and other varieties of the part in the rootstock seedling 1 meter above and below, so there will be obvious thickness changes at the beginning of the grafting. Because this method can make the wild tree species below the stubble more drought-resistant, flood-resistant, disease-resistant and pest-resistant, so the ancient pear tree can also grow luxuriantly and have a long lifespan. It is gratifying that the Gaolan County Ancient Pear Garden Protection Center has mastered a new technology, and has built a high-quality rootstock nursery dedicated to abdominal connection and bridging technology, and gradually promoted and applied this technology in Shichuan Ancient Pear Garden, providing solid technical support and resource supply for the sustainable development of Ancient Pear Garden.
Multiple measures at the same time
Solve the problem of ancient tree tilt
The tree will certainly be tilted for a hundred years, and Shichuan fruit farmers have summed up a variety of methods to reduce the burden on the ancient pear trees with heavy burdens and tilted branches, which are hanging trees, branch trees, and top trees. Hanging trees are a short-term tree protection method that occurs once a year. The branch tree and the top tree are long-term support for the old pear tree. The material used in the top trees of the branch trees is subject to availability. Generally, small and medium-sized branches close to the ground can be supported by wooden poles; relatively large branches or main poles are inclined pear trees, which must be supported by stone piers. If supported with wood, it is easy to decay. If you use iron pipes, the cost is higher, and it will also rust. After long-term observation and practice, fruit farmers believe that the support durability of stone cement inlay is the best, and the protective effect on pear trees is also the most stable and effective.
Listing protection
Let every ancient tree have an "ID card"
Some people say, "Ancient trees are living cultural heritage, historical buildings are destroyed, and they can be restored according to the records in books or people's memories, and when the ancient trees are destroyed, there is no more." Therefore, in order to protect the ancient trees, Gaolan County set up the Ancient Pear Garden Protection Center, and each ancient tree in the ancient pear tree group in Shichuan Town was listed for protection. Up to now, Shichuan Ancient Pear Garden has a total of 9425 ancient pear trees listed for more than 100 years, forming an ancient tree community with ancient pear trees as the main body, and ancient trees with "ID cards" are more conducive to management and protection.
Lanzhou Daily all-media reporter Meng Xia Dong Xin Li Peike Ma Fangqian Xu Yingjie Wen/Photo