In the bustling city, busy migrant workers run around in various high-rise buildings every day to chase their dreams and lives, but in the mainland where people are inaccessible and the mountains are steep, there is such a special group of "migrant workers".
It is no exaggeration to say that they are the most extreme migrant workers in the mainland, and unlike most jobs, they are accompanied by mountains, rocks and valleys every day, without friends or benefits, just to bear the original intention and responsibility in their hearts.
Decades of sticking to the mountains, living a lonely but meaningful life, this job requires a lot of energy, some even 24 hours a day, and even life-threatening.
Their minimum salary is only 600 yuan, but even so, whether they are highly educated or ordinary people, they are still willing to give up their privileged lives to engage in this special job.
In their own words, they are guarding the treasures of cultural heritage and the inheritance of Chinese culture.
Stick to the original intention
Chinese culture has a long history, far away in the green land of Bashan and Shushui, there are countless splendid civilizations, with the washing and passing of the years, telling you a wordless story.
In Bashu, there is an obscure but special group with a huge mission, they are the guardians of cultural relics "Bashu cave guards".
Far away from the world and without any material comforts, the lonely shadow of the green lantern in the deep mountains is spent for decades, and their work is the Buddha statues, scriptures and murals carved and painted by the guardians for thousands of years.
These huge grottoes full of years of baptism are the treasures of mainland culture, and they are the crystallization of the wisdom and art of ancient craftsmen in the mainland, and the life of this group of guardians known as "the most extreme workers" is unimaginably lonely.
The emergence of the title of "extreme worker" is due to the photography master Yuan Rongsun, who loved painting in the early years, as the so-called art is all connected, and he fell in love with photography on the road of pursuing painting.
In 2005, Yuan Rongsun went to a moss-covered ancient stone statue for the first time, and the stone statue looked more profound and moving because of the rain, and it was at this moment that Yuan Rongsun came up with the idea of photographing the Bashu Grottoes.
In the eyes of most people, the grotto is a tall and solemn image, but in the eyes of 42-year-old Yuan Rongsun, there is a rustic side behind the solemn stone statue.
In 2018, Yuan Rongsun walked into Zizhong County, Sichuan, deep in the mountains, all the silence, the breeze blowing through the huge grottoes, he couldn't help but be moved, it turned out that the grottoes are around us, these things are all the efforts of the ancient craftsmen.
Yuan Rongsun visited some of the cave guardians and listened to them slowly talk about their lives, as guardians, they spent their days with stone statues, and they were very lonely for decades.
In order to take better care of some of the cave guards and prevent some thieves from looting and stealing cultural relics, some of them moved directly to the grotto, where a bed, a simple table and a pot were their home.
In the face of various emergencies such as wind and sun, lightning and thunder, this group of workers never flinched, they told Yuan Rongsun that this responsibility must always be borne by someone, these things must be inherited, and what they can do is to protect silently.
It is also with their selfless dedication, thousands of years of cultural treasures have been standing for people to enjoy until now, countless tourists go to Bashu to watch these grottoes to feel the simplicity of the years and the history of telling.
A treasure hidden in the mountains
Most of the stone statues are mainly Buddhist, solemn and solemn, but under the lens of Yuan Rongsun, these stone statues are more like works of art carefully carved by the ancients, like an ancient book that tells the inheritance.
On the cliffs, words and images are carved on the natural stone walls, and the ancients used knives as pens to engrave emotions and inheritance between the mountains and mountains.
Speaking of grotto statues, most people think of the famous "four grottoes", but in fact, among the nearly 6,000 grotto statues in the mainland, the Bashu grottoes are unbeatable, occupying the first place in the national grottoes with more than 2,800 places.
Cave statues were produced in ancient India in the 1st century AD, before which the images of Buddhism were mostly symbolized by pagodas, and with the construction of Buddha statues in the Gandhara region, the cave statues gradually formed, and Buddhism began to dig stone walls in deep caves to depict mural stone statues.
The grottoes were introduced into the Western Regions and then all the way to the east to the Central Plains, and the large-scale introduction of the grotto shape into the Bashu region was really in the period of the Northern and Southern Dynasties, the Tang and Song dynasties flourished on a large scale, and the historical context of nearly 1400 years has never been interrupted.
It is no exaggeration to say that the grottoes in the Bashu area can best reflect the modeling style of the Central Plains in the north, and on this basis, the unique regional characteristics of the local area have attracted everyone's love.
In the entire Sichuan-Chongqing region, there are 2,800 large and small grottoes, distributed in more than 80 counties, some of which are famous and nameless hidden in the depths of the mountains, and Yuan Rongsun spent nearly ten years walking on the land of Sichuan and Chongqing intermittently, recording the Bashu Grottoes with a camera.
Some of these grottoes are in the village, some are in the mountains, and the tranquility of the people blends into nature, and it was on the long way to explore the monuments that he met this special group of migrant workers.
Because some of the grottoes were too deep hidden and extremely remote, it took a lot of effort to find Yuan Rongsun, and sometimes he had to turn to the local people for help, some of whom were quick to show him the way, and some of them looked at him with extremely scrutinizing eyes.
And these people usually have a special name "so-and-so clerk", which is what we call cave guards, Yuan Rongsun's lens not only has grottoes, but also this group of special people.
Since 2006, when Yuan Rongsun came into contact with the grottoes and began filming, he would talk to the local cave guards everywhere he went, and learned from the conversations that some of them were fathers and sons, some were husband and wife, and some even had three generations of grandparents and grandchildren.
Time is chiseled by the wind on the grotto statue engraved with the traces of time, every time people stop to feel the historical breeze, and in order to protect these irreplaceable historical relics, many local villagers spontaneously become cultural relics administrators.
They became the guardians and inheritors of the grotto's national treasure, and some of them worked for more than 40 years.
Forever the Cave Keeper
The rarer the things, the more coveted by poachers, and cultural relics are no exception, the Bashu Caves are not as famous as the four major caves and are more distributed, so in this case, many poachers covet cultural relics.
The whole Buddha statue Buddha head is the most valuable, so many small grottoes in the deep mountains and remote areas will become the object of poachers to chase, but the Buddha head is gone, the value and artistic appreciation of the whole Buddha statue will be greatly reduced, so there will be a "cultural relics protector" figure.
In Yuan Rongsun's book "Bashu Grottoes: Chinese Civilization Hidden in the Countryside", it is mentioned that "deep in the green rice fields, villagers hurriedly walked in front of the Buddha statue with their bare feet and hoes, and they cultivated and lived while guarding the Buddha statue."
The lives of these people are dominated by stone statues, which are guarded for decades, and for a long time they guard this silent stone statue alone, for which some of them can only return home for a month, and some even directly settle their homes in the grotto.
Longquan Station in Longquan Mountain in the suburbs of Chengdu, the end of the ancient road stretching with peach blossoms and green trees is the "Maitreya Great Buddha Temple", where there are more than 50 niches and more than 160 statues, and the stone wall inside is carved and done by the Buddha Shakyamuni.
Uncle Xiao, the guardian here, has been silently guarding the cultural relics for more than 40 years, and he has long pressed his home here, and his sons and grandchildren have grown up here, so the family has a natural affinity for these statues from childhood to adulthood.
In Uncle Xiao's impression, almost all his life was dedicated to the grottoes, and in his early years, he lived a lonely life guarding the grottoes, not for anything else but for the responsibility and inheritance in his heart.
The Maitreya Buddha of the Tang Dynasty behind Uncle Xiao
Zeng Xiangyu, 70, and Liu Fafeng, 76, are a husband and wife who are also the cave keepers of Mingshan Temple, and they have been guarding this cultural relic for more than 20 years since 2005.
In 2020, the local county government increased their monthly food allowance of 150 yuan to 200 yuan, 200 yuan is the price of a meal in a high-end restaurant for many people, but a month's worth for the couple.
Some people may say, "Their work is so hard, the salary must be very high", but on the contrary, the salary of the cultural relics is linked to the grade of the cultural relics.
The minimum is 600 yuan, the highest is 1200 yuan, like Zeng Xiangyu and his wife's salary is only 800 yuan, under the salary of 800 yuan, the work is indeed extremely hard and pays all year round.
The Cultural Relics Bureau requires that people cannot leave the grotto for 24 hours, so they have to sleep next to the Buddha statue, and it is impossible for them to do some other part-time jobs.
As a result, almost no one wants to set foot in such a difficult and unprofitable position, but cultural relics cannot be left unguarded, so as the years change, the cave keepers become local villagers, who have built their homes around the grottoes from generation to generation and bear the responsibility.
In their eyes, they don't care about the amount of salary, but more because they put fame and fortune aside to do meaningful things, which they can't get in exchange for any amount of money.
Maybe their life is poor, but they have become an indispensable person on the road of cultural relics inheritance, and now in the entire Bashu region, there are cave guards in the places where there are grotto statues.
Some of them are in public office, some are spontaneous guards, they use their own strength to protect and inherit cultural treasures, Yuan Rongsun's lens is not only a beautiful and solemn grotto picture, but also a kind of spiritual inheritance and a group of amiable and respectable people.
Cultural relics are silent but hide thousands of words, and historical and cultural treasures are always guarded silently!
Resources:
1. Red Star News: "Bashu Grottoes and Its Rural Guardians", 2022-11-5
2. Sichuan Online: "16 Years of Searching for the Bashu Grottoes, Yuan Rongsun Pays Tribute to the Chinese Civilization Hidden in the Countryside with Lens and Words", 2022-12-10
3. Woo: "Cave Guards in the Depths of Qilian Mountain: The Buddha Statue of Jinta Temple is Companion, "Alone" Boils Out the "Taste"", 2021-10-11
4. Baidu Encyclopedia: "Bashu Grottoes: Chinese Civilization Hidden in the Countryside"
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