"Live broadcasters, vibrato shooters, and program makers all love to come, and sometimes dozens of groups of people come a day." Lai Shufang said that "Tang Changbu Shoe Factory" has now become a place for Internet celebrities to punch cards
According to statistics, more than 73% of the mainland's intangible cultural heritage items are preserved in the countryside. In recent years, with the continuous advancement of the rural revitalization strategy, relying on intangible cultural heritage resources, innovating intangible cultural heritage industries, inheriting national culture, becoming a new way for rural people to increase income, and also opening up a new space for the inheritance of intangible cultural heritage projects
Since 2018, Sichuan has promoted the revitalization of traditional crafts and the revitalization of intangible cultural heritage to help rural revitalization, relying on traditional craft projects to set up more than 160 intangible cultural heritage workshops in the province, identifying the first batch of 50 provincial-level intangible cultural heritage workshops, driving more than 20,000 people to employment, and helping nearly 8,000 poor households to lift themselves out of poverty
Wen | Hui Xiaoyong, Ye Hanyong, and Li Like, reporters of the "Lookout" news weekly
On February 12, 2018, General Secretary Xi Jinping came to Zhanqi Village, Pidu District, Chengdu, Sichuan Province, to inspect the rural revitalization work, and worked with local grassroots cadres and villagers to talk about family routines and people's livelihood, understand the inheritance and development of intangible cultural heritage such as Shu brocade, Shu embroidery, and Tang Changbu shoe making skills, and look forward to the beautiful picture of rural revitalization.
In Zhanqi Village, General Secretary Xi Jinping stressed that the Nineteenth National Congress of the Communist Party of China proposed the implementation of the rural revitalization strategy, which is a major strategy to accelerate rural development, improve farmers' lives, and promote the integration of urban and rural areas.
Four years later, the reporter of "Lookout" News Weekly once again walked into Chengdu Pidu District, and the two national intangible cultural heritages represented by "Shu embroidery" and "Tang Changbu shoes" have been rejuvenated in the inheritance and innovation.
Intangible cultural heritage is the crystallization of wisdom and civilization created by the people of all ethnic groups on the mainland in the long-term practice of production and life. In the new era, a series of vivid practices on the protection of intangible cultural heritage have provided new impetus for promoting the strategy of rural revitalization.
Shops lined up at the mouth of Zhanqi Village, Pidu District, Chengdu (photo taken on August 8, 2021) Photo by Guo Xinyi/ This magazine
Traditional "craftsmanship" transformed into national tide "intangible cultural heritage"
"Seeing my cloth shoes, the general secretary said that when he was in the team in northern Shaanxi, he wore cloth shoes made by his fellow villagers, which were very comfortable and breathable. I plucked up enough courage to say to the general secretary, the people are very grateful, I want to send you a pair of cloth shoes. Lai Shufang recalled, "The general secretary said that he could not send it, but he had to take money to buy it." ”
During the inspection of Zhan Qi Village, General Secretary Xi Jinping inquired about the production method of Lai Shufang, the inheritor of Tang Changbu shoe making skills, and personally bought a pair of work cloth shoes. This scene, now that I think back again, Lai Shufang is still very excited, "Through him saying this cloth shoe, understanding this cloth shoe, I feel that the general secretary has a lot of experience in rural labor and is very close to handmade cloth shoes."
The intangible cultural heritage formed in the development of traditional handicrafts is the most down-to-earth part of the excellent traditional culture, and has accumulated the profound cultural heritage and spiritual connotation of generations of working people. Combining the protection, inheritance and development and utilization of intangible cultural heritage to achieve the creative transformation and innovative development of Chinese culture has always been a major event that General Secretary Xi Jinping attaches great importance to.
According to statistics, more than 73% of the mainland's intangible cultural heritage items are preserved in the countryside. In recent years, with the continuous advancement of the rural revitalization strategy, relying on intangible cultural heritage resources, innovating intangible cultural heritage industries, inheriting national culture, becoming a new way for rural people to increase income, and also opening up a new space for the inheritance of intangible cultural heritage projects.
In August 2018, the antique street "Rural Eighteen Fangs" independently built by Zhanqi Village opened the street, and the oil mill, soy sauce factory, cloth shoe factory, bamboo weaving workshop, Pixian Douban square... Traditional handicraft workshops are unveiled en masse. Lai Shufang's cloth shoes occupy a prominent position and are named "Tang Changbu Shoe Factory". In the same year, Tang Changbu's shoe-making skills were selected into the list of intangible cultural heritage of Sichuan Province.
Nowadays, the layout of "Tangchang Cloth Shoe Factory" and "Front Shop and Back Factory" in Zhan Qi Village not only meets the consumption needs of tourists, but also facilitates tourists to observe the production of cloth shoes on the spot. "We moved the entire production line here, and now the old store is open at the same time as the double store here." Lai Shufang introduced that in 2019, the sales volume of cloth shoe factory was more than 7,000 pairs, and in 2020 and 2021, although affected by the new crown pneumonia epidemic, sales were also more than 4,000 pairs.
"As many tourists as Zhan Qi Village receives, I will receive as many as I can here." Whether you buy it or not, everyone loves to visit here. Live broadcasts, vibrato shooters, and programs all love to come, sometimes dozens of groups of people a day. Lai Shufang said, "Tang Changbu Shoe Factory" has now become an Internet celebrity punch card.
In 2008, Anjing Town, Pidu District (changed to a street in 2019) improved the supporting facilities related to the Shu embroidery industry and established a Shu embroidery training base. Anjing is known as the "hometown of Shu embroidery", as early as the Ming and Qing Dynasties, it formed an embroidery scale of "household female red, household needlework". "Anjing has gradually built a home flexible employment base covering an area of more than 50 acres, integrating Shu embroidery skills training, production research and development, cultural tourism, and market sales." Shu embroidery has become an important way to promote flexible employment at home for urban and rural women. Yang Min, director of the Shu Embroidery Office of Anjing Street in Pidu District, introduced.
Shu embroidery, also known as "Sichuan embroidery", is one of the four famous embroideries in China with Su embroidery, Xiang embroidery and Cantonese embroidery, its style is rigorous and delicate, bright and flat, the composition is sparse, thick and round, the color is bright, and the richness of the theme embroidery method is among the best among the four famous embroideries. Under the skillful hands of embroiderers, a silk can be divided into eight, and even two works with different colors, stitches and patterns can be embroidered on both sides of an embroidery cloth, which is called "three different embroidery".
Lu Li, who has grown into a provincial arts and crafts master in Sichuan Province, was one of the first embroidery girls in Anjing to receive training in Shu embroidery skills. Lu Li once briefly studied Shu embroidery after graduating from high school in 1992, and after starting to develop the Shu embroidery industry in Anjing, she participated in the free training of Shu embroidery skills organized by the government and immersed herself in learning Shu embroidery skills, "not only comprehensively learning Shu embroidery skills, but also improving her comprehensive quality by participating in quality training courses such as art and art appreciation."
In 2011, Wu Xueqiang, a master of arts and crafts in Sichuan Province, came to Anjing and built his own master studio. As one of the first batch of high-level embroidery girls to cultivate talents, Lu Li mastered the most complex total heterogeneous embroidery in Shu embroidery in one year, and also learned art knowledge such as painting, color and composition by participating in the art training course of Chengdu Textile College. She and several other skilled young embroiderers were also transferred by the base to set up a high-level Shu embroidery studio in Anjing Town, specializing in the production of high-precision artworks.
In 2019, Anjing Shu Embroidery Cultural and Creative Park opened, which is a creative base for the Shu embroidery industry integrating Shu embroidery creative center, Shu embroidery training college, offline experience store and online marketing platform. At the same time, in order to solve the development problem that Shu embroidery enterprises were once difficult to find a market and could not guarantee continuous orders, Anjing Street also set up a collective enterprise and cooperated with Jingdong Yunchuang to establish a company to jointly promote the research and development, design, production and marketing of Shu embroidery cultural and creative products. "We have established domestic and cross-border e-commerce sales channels with e-commerce platforms such as JD.com and Tmall, and there are currently 8 companies participating in the listing, and more than 100 kinds of Shu embroidery products are on the shelves." Yang Min said.
In recent years, with the strong support of the state, all localities have taken the socialist core values as the guide, adhered to creative transformation and innovative development, found the connection point between traditional culture and modern life, and continuously met the people's growing needs for a better life.
Entering the exhibition hall of Anjing Shu Embroidery Cultural and Creative Park, all kinds of new Shu embroidery products have appeared: The Shu embroidery champion costume customized for the champion of the "Glory of the King" competition, the modern and simple design of the Shu embroidery ornament... All kinds of new Shu embroidery products are more and more loved and sought after by consumers. According to statistics, the annual output value of Anjing Shu embroidery enterprises has reached tens of millions of yuan, accounting for about 70% of the Shu embroidery industry in Chengdu.
The reporter learned from the Sichuan Provincial Department of Culture and Tourism that since 2018, Sichuan has promoted the revitalization of traditional crafts and the revitalization of the countryside through intangible cultural heritage, relying on traditional craft projects to set up more than 160 intangible cultural heritage workshops in the province, identifying the first batch of 50 provincial intangible cultural heritage workshops, driving more than 20,000 people to employment, and helping nearly 8,000 poor households to get rid of poverty.
On April 17, 2020, in Zhanqi Village, Tangchang Town, Pidu District, Chengdu, Lai Shufang sorted out and arranged the finished cloth shoes soles wang Xi photo /this magazine
After several ups and downs, it is still tenacious and rooted in the countryside to continue to inherit
At the 2017 Central Rural Work Conference, General Secretary Xi Jinping pointed out: "We must let the living local culture be passed on, and dig deep into the intangible cultural heritage such as folk art, opera and opera, handicrafts, national costumes, and folk activities." It is necessary to organically combine the protection, inheritance, development, and utilization, combine the outstanding heritage of the mainland's agricultural civilization with the elements of modern civilization, endow it with a new connotation of the times, let The chinese excellent traditional culture live endlessly, and let the mainland's historic agricultural civilization show its charm and style in the new era. ”
The protection and inheritance of intangible cultural heritage embodies the national spirit and the spirit of the times, and carries the memories and nostalgia of generations of people. It is never easy to pass on the torch, and it is even more necessary to endure loneliness from generation to generation, so that the value of perseverance can slowly develop in the long years.
As early as the early days of reform and opening up, Shu embroidery as a high-end handicraft became one of the main products of Chengdu's export earnings, "at that time, the monthly foreign exchange earned in the factory was equivalent to more than 3 million yuan, and the embroiderers could earn 1,000 yuan a month." As an old employee of Chengdu Shu Embroidery Factory, Wu Xueqiang entered the factory at the age of 16 and studied under Peng Yongxin, the first generation of "Chinese Arts and Crafts Master" in New China.
However, after experiencing the glory of the "Golden Decade", the state-owned large factories with old products, single materials, lagging marketing, and backward systems have gradually declined in the great waves of the market economy. In the 1990s, Wu Xueqiang, like all the embroiderers in the factory, went home to work.
Until entering the new century, Shu embroidery, which used to be mainly exported, also had a certain market in China, and Wu Xueqiang and many Shu embroidery heritage talents once again reopened the embroidery workshop in the form of personal studios.
Tang Changbu shoes also have a similar experience. In 1958, when Lai Shufang was born, her father Lai Xuecheng was already a teacher with 20 years of shoemaking experience in Tangchang, Pidu. In 1980, Lai Shufang entered the former PiXian Shoe Factory and became a shoe worker.
Cloth shells, covers, torritos, scissors, bottoms, dips, bottoms, last shoes, sand edges, shearing... A pair of finished cloth shoes needs to complete a total of 32 large processes and more than 100 small processes, and each link must be closely connected.
"Take the sand edge, compared with the northern wrapped cloth shoes, raw cloth shoes are exactly the characteristics of Chuanxi cloth shoes, after the shoes are dried, the sand edge should be on the special grinding wheel to avoid the shoes wearing the line, to repeatedly sand, repeatedly cut, repeatedly brushed, before and after a total of 6 times to complete. The material of the sole is exposed, and the customer can see it at a glance, and it is particularly comfortable to wear. Lai Shufang said, "This also leads to high production costs of handmade cloth shoes, which is difficult to compete with industrialized products." ”
But in Lai Shufang's heart, cloth shoes are not only a business, but also a craft handed down from her father's hands. "At that time, when I was idle at home for more than a year, when I rushed to the scene, when I met acquaintances, someone would ask ,' Sister Lai, are you still making shoes, where do you go to buy cloth shoes now?". With the support of many old customers, Lai Shufang and her sisters, as well as the brothers and sisters in the factory, returned to their old business, and several people opened a workshop that used traditional handicrafts to make cloth shoes.
"At that time, the production 'workshop' was in my home, and the brothers and sisters made shoes at home, and we used the board to pull the shoes to the market on the day of the rush. In addition, there is a boss surnamed Liao on Renmin South Road in Chengdu who still insists on selling cloth shoes, and we also supply him. Putting the finished shoes in the cloth pocket and catching the bus to the city is very hard to go back and forth. ”
"By 2008, my brother and sister were older, and I also had a retirement salary, so I planned not to do it." But some old buyers said: Sister Lai, if you don't do it, tell me in advance, I will buy more pairs. The old customers' simple feelings for cloth shoes touched Lai Shufang, and she made up her mind to stick to the production of cloth shoes.
Ai Peng, a son who graduated from college and works at a state-owned enterprise, supported his mother's decision with practical actions. Previously, Lai Shufang's workshop output has been maintained at more than 1,000 pairs per year, and Ai Peng returned to the cloth shoe store to help her mother increase the output to more than 4,000 pairs per year by optimizing the production process, strengthening creative design, and reclassifying products.
Cultivating "hands" to innovate "art"
It attracts more young people
In order to make intangible cultural heritage bloom more charming, it is necessary to strengthen the protection and inheritance of intangible cultural heritage and actively cultivate inheritors. In Sichuan, through the implementation of the rescue record project of representative inheritors of provincial intangible cultural heritage, the province has 7 UNESCO intangible cultural heritage list items, 153 national intangible cultural heritage representative projects, 611 provincial level representative inheritors, 107 national representative inheritors and 764 provincial level representative inheritors.
The reporter saw in the interview that more and more young people are walking into the countryside, walking into the intangible cultural heritage workshop, and learning the skills of intangible cultural heritage. In the view of Lai Shufang, Wu Xueqiang and Lu Li, their craftsmanship should not only be passed on to the next generation without reservation, but also hope that more young people with professional knowledge can participate in helping the intangible cultural heritage to go to the market.
In 2021, the "Pidu Handmade Shoe Making Technique" became one of the only two national intangible cultural heritages of cloth shoes in the country. Lai Shufang, who is more than an old rarity, still sticks to the production line, hand in hand, teaching the disciples to master every process and process.
"In addition to the nadi machine, soaking, cutting, torrito noodles... 32 processes and more than 100 processes are done by hand. Lai Shufang told reporters that it is not simple that small cloth shoes can become "intangible cultural heritage", because the piece-rate wages, income and technical proficiency are directly linked, and the income of new people is not too high. In order to cultivate heirs, she chose to give them subsidies and let novices learn with pay, "only in this way, so that they can insist on learning one process at a time, in order to master the whole skill."
Cultivating "hands" requires more innovative "art". Lai Shufang told reporters that after they introduced the upper design of the shoe into the elements of Shu embroidery and brown weaving, more young people began to pay attention to handmade cloth shoes. At the same time, it is also hoped that more social forces will enter the "intangible cultural heritage" industry, so that "intangible cultural heritage" products, including Tang Changbu shoes, can show more development paths with the help of market-oriented operations.
As a traditional skill that also requires a lot of time to accumulate, although the industry is gradually growing, Shu embroidery is also facing a breakthrough in future inheritance and innovation. "Trainees have just come out with low incomes, and it is difficult for young people to survive the first few years of Shu embroidery work. Also, our products are still too many traditional patterns, and we must find ways to attract more young people from colleges and universities to solve the problem of backward marketing and design. Wu Xueqiang said frankly.
"In recent years, we have established cooperation with Chengdu Textile College to cultivate new talents who can participate in creative design and market-oriented marketing." Yang Min said.
In the Shu Embroidery Academy in the Anjing Shu Embroidery Cultural and Creative Park, such a gratifying change in the inheritance of Shu embroidery is taking place. When the reporter came here, 23-year-old Qin Yinjun and more than a dozen students in the Shu embroidery class were ushering in the first lesson of the school.
Qin Yinjun originally worked in Guangdong after graduating from university, but out of love for traditional culture, she returned to Chengdu to find a job related to traditional culture, saw that Shu Embroidery College has a free training course, she "did not think" on the name, "every day to go to class, the teacher is also very strict, feel that here can systematically learn the knowledge of Shu embroidery, after graduation can engage in related work." ”
"You can't have more and less on the one hand, you have to learn embroidery in the afternoon, and everyone must learn to get on the bandage as soon as possible." Wu Xiaohong, a needlework teacher, kept checking the learning progress of each student in the classroom, "In the past, it took at least 3 years to train an embroiderer, but now through centralized training, we have used 3 months to achieve better results than in the past 3 years." ”
Wu Xiaohong, a villager in Gaoqiao Village, Anjing Subdistrict, joined the Shu Embroidery Academy as a teacher in the Shu Embroidery Training Class 5 years ago, "Now she not only has a job at the doorstep of her home, but also contributes to the inheritance of Shu embroidery." Wu Xiaohong created a set of Shu embroidery needlework teaching materials, combining the common stitching operation steps with the corresponding patterns and printing them on the white cloth, which is both a teaching material and a practice book, and has now become a standard textbook used by all students.
"Watching more and more people get involved in inheriting and developing this traditional skill, I am full of confidence in the future." Wu Xiaohong said. Since its establishment in 2009, the base has trained more than 7,000 trainees, of which more than 2,000 people have engaged in Shu embroidery-related work after training.
"General Secretary Xi Jinping's deep affection for intangible cultural heritage embodies the hearts of the people's leaders and ordinary workers, so let us firmly protect, inherit and make good use of intangible cultural heritage with heart, affection, and excavation of its rich connotation, so that it can bloom with more charming brilliance of the times." Yang Min said. ■