This summer, the "Gongzhuang taste" is particularly hot.
Recently, the 2023 "Taste of Gongzhuang" Food Carnival and Dongpo Lychee Culture Festival was launched, presenting a unique intangible cultural heritage culture and food culture feast in Gongzhuang.
Red culture, intangible cultural heritage culture and food culture are important cultural business cards of Gongzhuang Town, Boluo County. In recent years, Gongzhuang Town has been based on resource endowments, telling good food stories and revitalizing the red culture. By giving full play to the advantages of rural resources, Gongzhuang Town has continuously enhanced the overall strength of the cultural tourism and sports industry, continuously improved the national fitness public service system, comprehensively improved the grassroots cultural service system, built a new pattern of all-round tourism, and promoted the high-quality development of cultural tourism and sports undertakings and industries.
The red attractions are strung together into a boutique tourism demonstration belt
In the near future, the film "Never Fading", which tells the theme of rural revitalization in Huizhou, will meet the audience, and the main filming place of this film is Gongzhuang Town, Boluo County. In the movie, Chen Tiejun, a veteran of the old village, is determined to lead the people of his hometown to start a business and become rich, and build the green waters and mountains of his hometown into a red historical and cultural tourism base based on the Dongjiang Column.
This is also the blueprint for the story that is playing out in this red land. Shangping Dajie, the former site of the Bodong County People's Government, the site of the Yangmei Water battle... In Gongzhuang, a hot land with red genes and rich revolutionary traditions, the revolutionary footprints of Chinese communists can be seen everywhere. They made history and wrote the precious "Red Archive".
In recent years, Gongzhuang Town has deeply excavated the red culture of the "Eastern Longitudinal Spirit", red tourist attractions, repaired red tourist attractions such as Shangping Dajie, the former site of the Bodong County People's Government, and the Yangmei Water Battle Site, and coordinated the integration of ecological elements such as landscapes, forests, lakes and grasses along the route to create a high-quality rural tourism demonstration belt.
On the left side of the office of the Xia Luo Group in Pitoushen Village, Gongzhuang Town, a stone tablet with the words "Former Site of the People's Government of Bodong County" stands. Next to the stele is an old house covering an area of nearly 1,000 square meters, which is the former site of the Bodong County People's Government. This quaint old house was originally built by a local village sage surnamed Wu.
Back in time on July 1, 1949, the Bodong County People's Government was established in Pitoushen Village, Gongzhuang Town, with jurisdiction over 20 townships in Boluo, Longmen and Heyuan, and the old house became the office of the Bodong County People's Government, carrying out work such as supporting the front, rushing to repair highways and bridges, and raising grain. In October 1949, the whole territory of Boluo was liberated, and the people's government of Bodong County moved to the county seat of Boluo and was renamed the people's government of Boluo County.
Here, the action to build a red cultural brand never stops. As early as 2014, local village cadres initiated a fundraising campaign from village sages, raising about 1.65 million yuan to repair many historical and cultural sites such as the former site of the Bodong County People's Government, the Bajiashen Memorial Square, the Huang Daming Xiama Stone Monument, the Dali Group Chime Park and the Huang Daming Anti-Corruption Square. Due to limited funds, the repair of the old site of the Bodong County People's Government at that time only completed the restoration of the façade.
In 2020, Boluo County officially launched the Bodong County People's Government Site Restoration Project, which was repaired and restored on the basis of the original site. In accordance with the principle of "following historical facts and restoring the original appearance", the construction process organized relevant experts to conduct several inspections and demonstrations, collected archival materials from multiple parties, restored the original appearance of the old site of the Bodong County People's Government to the greatest extent, and was restored and completed in June 2021. Subsequently, Gongzhuang Town adjusted the exhibition content of the former site of the Bodong County People's Government, giving this revolutionary site a new cultural connotation.
Nowadays, walking into the old site of the Bodong County People's Government, whether it is the wall, roof or beam carving, the original appearance has been preserved and restored to the greatest extent. In order to better play the mission function and inherit the red gene, the restored site has a number of different theme exhibition areas and a number of exhibits, which better reproduce the combat history of the Dongjiang Column.
The gastronomic industry has risen as a new engine for rural revitalization
The beauty of the public village lies in the culture and the food. The main sour and spicy "Gongzhuang taste" makes the food culture here different from the traditional Hakka food culture from the beginning. Known for their spicy lovers, Gongzhuang people use locally grown vegetables and farmed poultry to concoct special delicacies such as snail tofu, sour and spicy pork intestines, chicken with radish sauce, pickled beans, etc., constantly exporting the taste of Gongzhuang to the outside world.
In order to better inherit and promote the local food culture, Gongzhuang Town also launched the "Taste of Gongzhuang" competition this year. In the competition, celebrity chefs and family contestants from Gongzhuang Restaurant gathered together to compete in different categories. At the 2023 "Taste of Gongzhuang" Food Carnival and Dongpo Lychee Cultural Festival held recently, Gongzhuang Town awarded the top ten members of the family group the Gongzhuang Rural Tourism Image Ambassador Certificate, awarded 9 "Specialty Restaurants" in the Business Group, and awarded 9 "Gold Medal Restaurants" to the Business Group. The relevant person in charge of Gongzhuang Town said that he hoped that by holding this event, the public would have a deeper understanding of Gongzhuang's unique food culture, expand the brand influence of Gongzhuang's food culture, and attract more tourists from outside the village to enter the Gongzhuang, feel the Gongzhuang, and understand the Gongzhuang.
In addition to "spicy taste", wax taste is also one of the food cultures that cannot be ignored in Gongzhuang Town, which has been successfully declared as an intangible cultural heritage. It is reported that at present, Gongzhuang Town has four county-level intangible cultural heritages: Gongzhuang Dragon Dance, Qilin Dance, Zhaigang Xiang Bull Dance, and Gongzhuang Lawei, which are far ahead in the county's townships and towns. In recent years, Gongzhuang Town has vigorously promoted the protection of intangible cultural heritage, paid attention to strengthening the construction of inheritors, and carried out non-genetic inheritance activities such as wax flavor making, lantern appreciation, and ox dance. In 2022, Gongzhuang Town set up an intangible cultural heritage office and opened an intangible cultural heritage exhibition hall in the town's party and mass service center, which displayed exhibits such as golden dragons, unicorns, and auspicious cows, some of which were donated by local village committees.
Today, the summer sweetness of lychee is in its final season. It is worth noting that the gongzhuang, located slightly north of the Tropic of Cancer, has a long history of lychee cultivation. To this day, there are still a large number of ancient lychee trees that are more than 100 years old, forming a number of century-old lychee tree groups. Lychees grown in Gongzhuang ripen 1-2 weeks later than other areas, with more adequate growth time and better fruit quality. Lychee varieties are mainly cinnamon, glutinous rice dumplings and Huaizhi, with rich sugar and sufficient water in pulp, and rich in trace elements such as zinc and selenium.
Represented by lychee, in recent years, Gongzhuang Town has combined local resource endowments to create "one village, one product", developed lemon, lychee, longan, citrus, honey pomelo, lotus mist planting, lobster, pit snail breeding and other breeding industries, and strived to transform characteristic agricultural products into tourism commodities, and continue to do a good job in Gongzhuang taste articles.
The industry derived from food culture is becoming a new engine for the revitalization of rural industries in Gongzhuang Town. Recently, the People's Government of Gongzhuang Town signed a cooperation agreement with Huizhou Shunxing Food Co., Ltd., Boluo County Nanmei Pepper Planting Professional Cooperative, Huizhou City Vocational College and Guangdong Zhibo Industrial Co., Ltd., taking the characteristic agricultural and sideline products and local cuisine of Gongzhuang Town as the starting point, linking more advantageous industrial resources, and striving to take industry as the driving engine, develop and strengthen the village collective economy, and continue to increase the income of villagers.
The grassroots cultural service system has been continuously improved
Nowadays, walking around the 5-kilometer-long circular greenway of Pitou Shen Village, people can pass by many historical and cultural sites such as Bajiashen Memorial Square, the former site of Bodong County Government, Huang Daming's Xiama Stone Monument, Dali Group Chime Park and Huang Daming Anti-Corruption Square, and appreciate the unique red culture in the green ecology of the countryside.
Lidong Village, more than 20 kilometers away from Pitou Shen Village, welcomed the opening of the first high-end homestay in Gongzhuang Town last year. The modern architecture and the beauty of the countryside attract many tourists from the surrounding cities. It is reported that the homestay project can increase the collective economic income of Leedong Village by about 6-100,000 yuan per year, and drive the sales of local agricultural products.
While promoting the development of the cultural tourism industry with high quality, Gongzhuang Town also pays attention to the development of local cultural and sports undertakings. In recent years, Gongzhuang Town has actively promoted the construction of cultural fronts, and relocated town-level cultural service centers to town party and mass service centers to realize the sharing of positions, resources and activities. At the same time, the public village takes the improvement of quality and efficiency of the administrative village (community) comprehensive cultural service center as the starting point, optimizes the cultural activity space of villagers, and adds cultural facilities and equipment.
Nowadays, wonderful cultural activities to benefit the people are becoming the daily life of Gongzhuang people. Here, the relevant departments of Gongzhuang Town organize and carry out cultural activities such as "Our Festival" theme activities, calligraphy training, landscape photography, and cultural performances in conjunction with major festivals, enriching people's spiritual and cultural life.
In Gongzhuang, the Wanlibi Road Project, which runs from Orange Bridge in the south to Otter Bridge in the north, has a total length of 7.5 kilometers, connecting Pitoushen Village, Xikou Village, Sijiazeng Village and Xilian Village, and is becoming a new place for mass fitness and leisure. The continuous improvement of sports facilities has also provided local residents with better national fitness public services. In recent years, Gongzhuang Town has renovated the basketball court of the town culture and sports square, and maintained and updated the fitness and sports equipment such as basketball hoops, table tennis and fitness paths in the town, village and group cultural squares. Nowadays, the mass sports activities in Gongzhuang Town are becoming more and more colorful, basketball friendly matches, green pick-up runs, gymnastics team building and other activities have been carried out one after another, competitive sports have steadily improved, and their ranking in county-level youth championships has improved year after year.
[Written by] Liao Yuxian Gongzhuang Xuan
【Photo】Liang Weichun (partly courtesy of Gongzhuang Town)
【Author】 Liao Yuxian; Liang Weichun
【Source】 Southern Press Media Group South + client