【Walking Huizhou 159】Jingtan Zhi'an Banshan Field: After a hurried visit, I couldn't find the field in the mid-mountain
Sima Fan/Wen
By the time we reached Midwayama, the sun was already westward. In the sunset, cooking smoke rises from the chimney of the farmhouse's kitchen. It was still early for dinner, and I smelled the strong aroma of tea leaves when the village tea factory roasted tea. I know that those who smoke smoke have to eat dinner in a hurry, and they have to make tea in the evening. There are also tea pickers in the mountains, just bring some dry food pads at noon, at this time they are already hungry. This is the real Huizhou farmer, the most ordinary day in the busy agricultural season. However, those who pick tea in the southeast corner are mostly silver-haired people, all over the mountains and wilderness, and it is difficult to find one or two young adults.
The winding road winds all the way up the col on this side, and the half-mountain field is in the col next door, like two sides of the concave word. Passing by the tea factory, walking towards the village, I saw a tall Hui-style building from a distance, and there were three windows on the outer surface, although people did not enter, but I guessed that it was a structure of light and dark three, and the two-story mezzanine was quite high, and the whole building was not shorter than today's three-story building. Seeing this building, coupled with the fact that many old houses can be seen in the mid-mountain field from afar, I suddenly felt that this alpine village is not simple. It is especially coincidental that when I was writing the Banshan Da's article, I found a villager named Fang Xichun. He was born in 69 years in this house, and according to him, this house was built by his grandfather, which is estimated to be the building in the late Qing Dynasty and the Republic of China.
If you enter the village, and if nothing else, you can feel the prosperity of the village just from the stone road paved on the ground. The flat and neat stone slabs strung together the entire village. Unfortunately, I am just walking in the village, and if there is a drone looking down from above, the stone road in the picture must be spectacular. In the old days, before the road was opened, from the well pool under the mountain to the mid-mountain field, there were paved stone roads like this. Compared with the ancient official road of Huihang, this is not too much. Today, in most parts of the village, the stone road is well preserved, and a few areas are poured with cement on the stone road, but that does not affect the intuitive feeling of the stone road.
Speaking of which, villages like Banshan Tian have seen a lot in my journey to Huizhou over the years. But you must note that such a village in the mountains really has its own unique highlights. One is the aforementioned three-story mansion, if such a house I have encountered elsewhere before. Then there is also a house in the village, which is rare. Looking at this building, the area is not large, Xu Zheng, because of this, can not expand left and right, so can only develop upward. Next to it is a small house in the shape of a "7", and the empty part below is the passage of the villagers' road, and above the road, the houses are built in the sky, which can be called "crossing the street". The tour guide often says that Huizhou architecture has "twists and turns", people are not uncommon, it is better to come to the mid-mountain field to see this volley of houses, it is indeed more flavorful.
Like most of the alpine villages in Huizhou, Banshan Tian also migrated from the villages below the mountain, and according to Fang Xichun, their village moved up from Fangtian Village in Tangli Township on the other side of the mountain, about two to three hundred years. Initially, people surnamed Fang lived in Zao Shutan. Zaoshutan Village is surnamed Wang, and the surname Fang came up the mountain from Tangli on the other side of the mountain, if nothing else, Zaoshutanwang's family should be the mother's uncle family surnamed Fang, or the in-law family, otherwise they would definitely not accept the Fang family's defection. According to word of mouth, it is said that the spirit dog raised by the ancestors of the Fang family has been hovering in the area of the present-day mid-mountain field and refuses to leave. So he exchanged glutinous rice balls with the original family for Banshanda. This kind of village is usually one village with one surname, and Banshan Tian is where the descendants of the surname Yanxi Fang live. The biggest advantage of having one surname in the whole village is being able to work together to do something. You see, when the Honrentang in Banshan Field's house was repaired, every family in the village had the money to contribute, and with a strong contribution, the project was quickly completed. The village also used a village-wide map to mark the amount of donations from house to house. In such a village, the cohesion is still very strong.
Since the name of the village is Banshan Field, as the name suggests, there must be a good field in this half-mountain. As for where exactly is this field? I walked in a hurry, but I couldn't find it. Asked Fang Xichun, he told me that one was that the middle of the village was originally a field, but now it has become a house. There are also two perennial streams next to the village, where the stream flows, and there are many good fields. It's just a pity that most of these fertile fields are now deserted! This is just a few hundred years ago, the ancestors found a place to fill their stomachs, and now there is only one name left. In a few years, I am afraid that when people go to empty buildings, even the name of the village will disappear from the map.
The present-day Banshan Field was administratively subordinate to the village of Jingtan in Chakou Town, and before the merger of the administrative villages, it was subordinate to the village of Zhi'an. The name of the public security village, I thought at first, like Poshan and Hengshan, was only after the founding of New China. Consulting the "Gazetteer of Xiao County" learned that the name of public security came from the security here during the Republic of China, so public security was used. Among the villages under the jurisdiction of Zhi'an Village, Banshan Tian has the largest population, with 92 households and 291 people in the 80s of last century, which is more than the village committee station of Zhi'an Village. Therefore, when I stepped into the mid-mountain field, I could still see many people in the village. However, you should also be able to guess that these left-behind people are also mostly elderly, which may be a common feature in rural areas across the country.
Looking back, Banshan Tian has indeed not produced any big people who can go down in history, but Fang Xichun still has a strong sense of pride when he talks about his hometown. He said that Banshan Da was the first village in the surrounding area to have electricity, and even the surrounding villages were able to get electricity thanks to Banshan Da. Because there is a small hydropower station built in Banshantian, and the fact that a hydropower station can be built is all because Banshan Tian has a stream that does not dry up for many years, you can see how the ancestors of the Fang family chose a place to settle. In Fang Xichun's memory, Banshan Tian not only had a hydropower station, but also a water mill and a water canal, and everything flourished because of water. Mountains and rivers, the root of the village! The mid-mountain field in the secluded mountains, because of this self-sufficient advantage, people's lives are leisurely, and they have the style of Tao Yuanming's peach orchard. There are 12 people's teachers alone, and even three generations of grandchildren have been teaching whips. The craftsmen in the village are also famous, and a brick knife in Xiang Yong is brilliant, at that time there was a brick carving skill competition in Dafu, he overwhelmed the crowd and won the crown, known as "the first brick knife in southern Jiannan".
Finding fertile land on the mountains can make the ancestors self-sufficient, so that they can multiply and slowly form villages of nearly 100 families. Fertile land was abandoned, roads were built, and people yearned for a better life, so they left their hometowns and went to live in the city, which is also the inevitability of the times. What kind of village Banshan Tian's future can develop into, I think not only outsiders like me have no way of knowing. Perhaps, the people in the village are also confused, right? In a hurry, I did not see a good field, let alone a former hydroelectric power station, but I remembered this place - Mid-Levels!