□ Qu Rongfang
"Five thousand years of civilization laid the glorious history of Shenzhou in farming, and two hundred years of shame used industrial and commercial law to reshape The modern majesty of China" This is a couplet hanging in front of the gate of a private "Nonggen Museum" covering an area of more than 5,000 square meters in The Village of Twenty Lipu, Huaniu Town, Maiji District, and is inscribed by Mr. Wang Zhi'an, president of the Majiayao Cultural Research Association. The museum has three major themes of farming, folklore synthesis and red exhibition, and has eight exhibition halls in terms of clothing, food, housing and transportation, reproducing scenes such as the remains of the commune, the former residence of the cave, the supply and marketing cooperative, the traditional Chinese medicine shop, and the old tea garden. After more than four years of night-and-day construction, the director of the museum, Wang Shixiang, has begun to take shape.
Walking into the gate of the museum, the courtyard is scattered with water tanks, rudders and other objects; The exhibition hall is equipped with looms, hand grinding, washboards, abacuses, etc.; In the Museum of Thematic and Scene Reproduction, scenes of the disappeared handicrafts such as spinning thread weaving, spinning linen bags, rolling felt rope, making tiles and pottery, and making paper gunpowder are presented, as well as scenes of craftsmen such as stonemasons, carpenters, painters, shavers, and blacksmiths. As small as a button, a food stamp, to a wardrobe crate, a variety of categories, reproducing all aspects of rural farming civilization in the northwest region, reflecting the whole picture of rural areas, agriculture, and farmers' production and life at that time. The red-themed pavilion mainly includes objects such as comic strips, leader badges, membership cards, and revolutionary families during the Long March of the Red Army, the War of Resistance, the War of Liberation, and the period of industrialization after the founding of New China.
Browsing through these large number of relics, we can clearly see the path of human beings from caves, cave dwellings, semi-cave dwellings, grass and wood structures, civil structures, brick and tile structures and other different housing courtyards, see the footprints of the ancestors who struggled to advance, see the gradual improvement of people's quality of life, see the great progress of science and technology culture, and see the development of history.
Director Wang told the author that the ultimate goal of building the "Nonggen Museum" is to build an ancient village of farming culture with taste, culture, influence and in an all-round way that reflects the local characteristics of Tianshui in the future. This ancient village must be a traditional, pristine, reflecting the non-genetic inheritance of folk culture courtyards, each courtyard varies from dynasty to dynasty, independent, unique, but also interconnected, seamlessly integrated, and finally realize the collection of folk culture, leisure and entertainment, catering and rest, children's play, farming experience, red education, film and television drama shooting as one of the large-scale multi-functional scenic spots. Listening to his explanations and looking at these dazzling old objects, the author seems to have traveled through time and space, entered the tunnel of history, and re-experienced the past and even ancient life. What it gives people is novelty, memory, nostalgia, and lingering emotion. It's more like a gray-haired old man, vividly telling the story of our past.
In 1964, Wang Shixiang was born into an ordinary peasant family in Qin'an County, known as "Xiliwa Township". He was intelligent and studious from an early age and was often rated as a "three-good student". During his studies at Gansu Agricultural University, he was an avid lover of literature and art, and served as the editor-in-chief of the school magazine "College Students". After graduation, he was assigned to work at the Tianshui Tractor Factory, during which he donated the 5,000 yuan reward for the Fuxi giant lantern made on behalf of the factory union to the Fuxi Temple. In addition, he also won the first prize in the painting category in the exhibition of employee works held by the Provincial Machinery Group Corporation.
After earning the first bucket of gold in his life by founding a decorative advertising company, Wang Shixiang began to transform into a warehousing and logistics industry. Although he has been involved in the business field for many years, he has not forgotten his love of traditional culture. As early as 2011, when he was engaged in warehousing and logistics business, because he had a site and a warehouse, he began to acquire and collect various folk artifacts. At that time, he often carried a camera, drove over the mountains and mountains, went into the village to find old objects, and his footprints were all over the land of Longyuan.
What Wang Shixiang has acquired and collected is always a folk artifact that others can't look at, from which he experiences a wisp of nostalgia, looking for a distant smoke, and listening to the story of a distant farming civilization. In order to inherit and protect the relics of agricultural civilization, Wang Shixiang began to have the idea of building a comprehensive museum with a certain scale that can reflect the farming period from farming and sowing to grinding and storage to crushing and processing, from food, clothing, housing and transportation to piano, chess, calligraphy and painting to martial arts entertainment, from craftsman production to intangible cultural heritage. As his inner sense of mission grew stronger and stronger, he felt that this was a move of merit in the contemporary era and benefit in the thousand autumns, and it was a cause that did not live up to the ancestors and could educate future generations. With a strong sense of responsibility, he gave up his long-term livelihood industry, gave up a superior life, and embarked on a road that required huge manpower, material resources, financial resources, and was full of thorns.
In Wang Shixiang's view, the intangible culture on the land of Longyuan is so thick that collecting these things is a noble cause and a spiritual inheritance. Therefore, every time he went to a small mountain village, his eyes were like searchlights sweeping around, and once he found valuable old things, he was soft and hard, and he had to receive them in his own hands. Some sellers ask for money, he "bleeds", sometimes people are angry, but he forcibly gives money and goods. In addition, when he receives more valuable collections, he will trace back to the roots and understand the stories in them.
As the collection grew, Wang Shixiang began to set aside three large warehouses in his storage garden to stack the collection, and later when he couldn't put it down, he piled it up everywhere. Around 2015, he cut off his business and simply embarked on the road of professional collecting. In 2018, he rented an idle site in The Village of Twenty Lipu in Huaniu Town to build the "Nonggen Museum", transformed the courtyard into an exhibition hall of more than 20 large and small rooms, and hired professionals to scrub, classify, repair, summarize and sort. According to Wang Shixiang, his collection has exceeded 1 million pieces, costing nearly 20 million yuan. Having exhausted his savings, he also sold a property and borrowed more than 1 million yuan, all of which was invested in the construction and collection of the museum.
Wang Shixiang's actions also touched many people, and everyone donated money and materials to support him. Among them, there are those who donate sculptures, those who donate model statues, and those who come to comfort the performances and so on. Although his "Nonggen Museum" has not yet officially opened, in the four years since its establishment, nearly 200,000 people have come to visit and study and carry out red education activities, and the experts, scholars, film and television actors, etc. received by the museum are not few, and many people feel very shocked after visiting the museum. After the famous painter Yang Wensen saw the relevant information on the Internet, he believed that Wang Shixiang was doing a great cause and was willing to contribute his paintings to support it. In October 2019, part of the museum's collection was unveiled in the "Tianshui City Celebrates the 70th Anniversary of the Founding of the People's Republic of China Economic and Social Development and Poverty Alleviation Achievements Exhibition"; In September 2020, the Lanzhou Morning Post reported on Wang Shixiang and his museum under the headline "This museum is 'not big', but it has an era"...
The versatile Wang Shixiang, while building the museum, also received other honors. In 2018, the song "Greetings from Beijing", written by him, continued to be broadcast on some channels in our city for more than a month. In the same year, his musical work "Silk Road Dream Song" won the Excellence Award of the First Tianshui Cultural and Creative Product Design Competition, and the photographic work "Dragon Boat Festival" won the third prize in the "Tianshui Girl" Cup Competition organized by the Municipal Women's Federation. In 2020, the original song "Wild Chrysanthemum" composed by him was introduced and reported by the "Beijing Hotline". In 2021, his original song "Father's Flat Burden" was praised by the society after it was published.
"Collecting history, witnessing suffering, remembering nostalgia, cherishing happiness, and embracing hope" is the original intention and significance of Wang Shixiang's creation of "Nonggen Museum". Today, retaining nostalgic memories and continuing the historical context has become an important part of life and an important task for building a famous city of cultural tourism.
Walking out of the museum, looking back frequently, a deep respect arises in the author's heart...