Editor's note:
Mountains and seas meet, go to spring together. A few days ago, representatives of the Photography Associations and Writers Associations of Rizhao City, Dongying City, Chongqing City, Youyang City, and Qianjiang in Shandong Province exchanged ideas, brought their lenses through the mountains and seas, recorded the good scenery of spring, captured the strong sound of the development of the four places, and continued to write about the mountains and seas of Luyu. From now on, Poster News will launch a series of reports on "Seeking Spring through Mountains and Seas", showing the spring scenery in the process of collecting wind in Luyu from multiple angles with pictures, texts and videos, and telling the story of cooperation and common prosperity across the mountains and seas in the four places.
Poster News reporter Jia Xiaoyi reports from Rizhao
Facing the mountains on three sides, a water surrounds the town, white stone walls, black green tiles, peach blossoms and apricots, and people near the water.
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(Video footage taken by Chen Qiang and Liu Lei)
I once thought that the village written by Shen Congwen was only in Xiangxi, but I never thought that there was also a village in Youshuihe Town, Youyang, which is more than 300 kilometers away from the main urban area of Chongqing. The Youshui River flows through this place, turning around and forming a secluded, open bay. Near the water and the mountains, there is an ancient village "floating" on the water: Hewan Cottage.
Photo by Liu Lei
This is an ancient village that has been "floating" on the water for 600 years, since the Hongwu period of the Ming Dynasty, the Tujia people built a village on the bank of the river bay and lived and multiplied. The Youshui River nourishes the village and isolates it from the outside world. To this day, Hewan Village has not yet been connected to the land route, and to get to the village, you need to take a boat from the town and walk on a waterway. The green hills on both sides of the river are continuous, the cicadas are blowing in the wind, accompanied by the clear sound of birds, the boat is more than halfway, you can see the green hills in the distance, the layers of stilted buildings.
Photo by Zhao Yong
The small building rises from the mountain, and the stilts stand by the water. The stilted building is a place where the Tujia people live and live. Because they live between the mountains and rivers, the terrain is uneven, the Tujia people are in the position of the mountain, support the house with wooden pillars, the ground floor is overhead, and the vast two-story space is used to live, according to the middle hall house, the left and right Rao rooms are lined up, and the Rao room is bounded by the middle pillar, divided into kitchen and bedroom, used for living and cooking. The small building is suspended on three sides, by the mountain and the water, as if hanging in the air, so it is named "stilted building".
Photo by Zhang Xia
Wooden structure, small green tiles, lattice windows, eaves hanging, wooden railings, horse corners, planed wooden boards to install houses, bluestone slabs to pave the road, the front of the building is gurgling water, and the back of the building is the green hills. In addition to the suspension on three sides, the elegant and light silhouette of the Tujia stilted building, the eaves with flying wing angles, the exquisitely decorated suspended railings, and the curved knife handle beams all flow with the superb skills of the Tujia craftsmen, as well as the Tujia family's yearning for nature, sky, and landscape that has been passed down from generation to generation.
Photo by Zhang Xia
The guide here is an old man over eighty years old, named Peng Kaifu, who is extremely strong and energetic. When it comes to the craftsmanship of stilted buildings and the traditional culture of the Tujia family, Peng Lao is like a treasure. The Tujia people who live here call themselves "Bizka", which means "native" in the local language. The Tujia people have their own language system, but there is no written language, and their culture is inherited in the Tujia language, which is solidified in stilted buildings.
Photo by Wang Yanwei
In recent years, the pulse of development has spread to Hewan Village, and many villagers have knocked down their stilted buildings to build cement houses, and Dongzhai, where Peng Lao is located, has basically retained these "living fossils" under the persuasion of him and his colleagues. In order to preserve the nostalgia of the Tujia people, Peng Lao walked out of Hewan Village, went to the provinces and cities along Wuling Mountain, consulted the county records of more than 20 counties, wrote the repair and protection materials of Hewan Village, wrote more than 100,000 words, and compiled "Youshui Tujia Culture". The buildings of Hewan Village have been preserved, telling the story of the Tujia family that has been inherited for more than 600 years to visitors from all over the world.
Photo by Zhao Yong
Photo by Wang Yanwei
In this "China's most beautiful Tujia cottage", the original Tujia stilted building complex is preserved, and the nostalgic memory of the Tujia people is also preserved. In the village, there is a "Tujia Traditional Construction Art Museum", and the director named it "Mengli River Bay". As far as the Tujia people are concerned, the stilted building is not only a living place, but also a cultural symbol, and it is also a nostalgia within reach. It took seven years to find dozens of old Tujia craftsmen to build this museum with the traditional Tujia construction skills. In the museum that is about to be completed, the fragrance of wood is permeated, and the eaves of the stilted buildings stretch out to the sky, like the wings of a bird, and also like the Tujia people who have been cultivating and living in the mountains and rivers for thousands of years, looking to the sky.
Photo by Zhao Yong
From Peng Lao to a single person, two generations of Tujia people have retained their culture and nostalgia with their own hands. The story that belongs to Hewan Village has also been integrated into new blood in recent years. In 2021, Shandong Dongying and Chongqing Youyang established a twinning relationship, and this encounter across thousands of mountains and rivers also brought development opportunities to Hewanzhai. In the cottage, the newly completed "Lianghe Academy" is taken from the two mother rivers of the Yellow River and Youshui, according to the morphological characteristics of the Tujia stilted building, supplemented by the texture of Qilu culture, integrating the folk customs and culture of Luyu and Chongqing, adding new possibilities for the development of cultural tourism in this ancient cottage.
Photo by Liu Lei
Photo by Zhao Yong
The upturned eaves jutted out above the water, and the stilted buildings were smeared with the light reflected in the water. On the bluestone road, walking by the Tujia sister who sang the "Konoha Love Song", in the flowing water in front of the door, was the Tujialang holding the canopy boat. The Youyou River, which flowed from 600 years ago, nourished the Tujia people along the river, and will continue to flow endlessly, telling the story of the future development of the ancient village.