The people of Ulju and Ulju that I know
Text/Liu Yiming
1. Ulju
Ulzhou is Wei County, which was not deeply impressed before, but this time I went to Wei County to further deepen my understanding because of my work. Ulju sounds a bit more ancient, and I like classical things, so I still call Ulju County.
Ulju is a place with a very rich cultural heritage, and it is also a famous cultural ancient city with mountains, water, and humanities.
In terms of geographical location, Ulzhou is bordered by Xiaowutai Mountain in the east, Laiyuan County in Baoding in the south, Guangling County in Shanxi Province in the west, and Yangyuan County in the northwest. It is a small plain surrounded by mountains.
The altitude of Ulju is close to 1,000 meters, the climate is relatively dry, and there is a little bit of a plateau, and you can't open your eyes under the sun. The main crops are millet, millet, corn, peas, mung beans, etc.
The yellow cake made of millet in Ulju is famous all over the world, and the people of Ulju use yellow cake as the staple food to rice and white noodles, and millet is also the favorite of Ulju people, and the millet porridge in the morning is the traditional delicacy of Ulju, that is, the stewed vegetable rice bowl.
There are several ways to make millet porridge stewed vegetable rice bowl, basically use Sichuan pepper boiling pot, and then boil potatoes and carrots, or boiled potatoes in the snow, or cabbage boiled potatoes, or tofu boiled potatoes, and there is a kind of yellow cabbage that is the top layer of cabbage in the earth to pickle it, and after pickling, boil or shred the potatoes with sesame oil and peppercorns, and soak the rice in pickled soup water, which is a perfect match. Millet from Ulju used to be used as a tribute to the imperial diet in Beijing. There are two main types of millet: Dabaigu and 8311, Dabaigu can boil porridge, and 8311 can cook both porridge and cooking. There are also buckwheat dumplings from the West Joint Venture, dried tofu from Nuanquan, bean batter, bowl top, rotary noodles and so on. They are all good things for lowering blood pressure, blood sugar, and lipids.
Ulzhou's tourism resources are very rich, there are mountains and rivers in the Jinhe Scenic Area of Xiaowutai Mountain in the east, it is a good place to escape the heat and enjoy the cool in summer, the highest altitude of Xiaowutai Mountain is 2882 meters, and it is a good place for travelers to climb the mountain in autumn and October.
The Flying Fox Valley in the south and the grassland in the air are a steep and strange high place. The altitude of the top of Daping Mountain in the air grassland is 2158 meters, there are famous edelweiss, the edelweiss avenue of Wei County is named after this, and I recommend setting the edelweiss as the county flower of Wei County.
There is Huliu River Reservoir in the southwest of Ulzhou, and two small cars can pass through the dam crest of Huliu River Reservoir, drive to the top of the dam in summer, the south is Danan Mountain in Ul County, and the west is Nuanquan Ancient Town. Sitting on the head of the dam with a breeze, watching the lake and sky blue from afar, quietly waiting for the sunset, slowly watching the red sun fall into the bottom of the lake and dye the lake red.
There are many ancient castles in Ulju, and I have been to the famous Nuanquan Ancient Town, Daiwangcheng Ancient Town, Songjiazhuang Ancient Town, Nanliuzhuang Ancient Town, Baicao Ancient Town and so on. There is one village and one fort in Ulzhou, and there are several forts in some villages, such as the two villages of Dongdaeuntuan Sanbao, which have formed a folk culture with local characteristics.
The castle is generally surrounded by the gate and the fortress wall, and it is also a strong fortress against foreign invasions. There are generally Zhenwu Temple, Guan Gong Temple, God of Wealth Temple, Grandma Temple, stage and so on in the fort. Generally, the fort gate is facing the Zhenwu Temple, and the central axis of the Zhenwu Temple divides the village into two parts, forming streets on the east and west sides.
Zhenwu Temple is the spiritual sustenance of the village, symbolizing the peace of the water and soil to protect the party. The Grandma Temple symbolizes the people who have lived on this land for generations, and the incense is continuous.
The Temple of Wealth blesses the fruits of people's labor through their labor. Looking forward to a bumper harvest and fortune.
The stage enriches the cultural life of the villagers. I have been to the heart-piercing stage in Songjiazhuang and watched a Jin drama at night. Watching the play in the open air, people generally stand and watch, some sit on a tricycle to watch, it is said that the county Jin opera troupe is invited to perform, the brigade pays a part of the money, and each person in the village shares the point, and it is estimated that it will cost 50,000 or 60,000 yuan to invite a time.
The small fort is the village, the big fort is the town, and there is an urn city in some of the big forts, which can attract the intruders and then block the passage to trap the intruders in the Weng, which can be described as catching turtles in the Weng.
There is a fort in the southeast of Ulju that is the famous Shangsuzhuang, every time the fifteenth day of the first lunar month, the people of ten miles and eight villages come to worship the lamp mountain, and build a gatehouse in the south of Shangsuzhuang, the gatehouse is made of wooden frames and rows of lamp stands are filled with rows of small lanterns, and the lamps are made of sesame oil and hemp rope in the lamps. There are symmetrical two walls on both sides of the gatehouse, and the north side is a square where people kneel and worship, from the thirteenth to the fifteenth night of the first month, people light all the small lanterns, and use the lamps to form the pattern of the zodiac according to the year of the goat, and this year is the year of the goat, and the pattern of the sheep is composed with the lamps, and there are blessing words for the year of the goat. There are also high lamp poles also hung with lights, symbolizing the meaning of step-by-step climbing and hundred-foot progress, the adults in the ceremony hold a child, pinning people's blessings on their children, hoping that the children will climb high every day in the future, and wish the wind and rain in the coming year and look forward to a bumper harvest.
In the wall fort of the high courtyard of Songjiazhuang Town, Ulzhou, the grandmother temple fair is held as scheduled on April 18 of the lunar calendar every year. Believers from a radius of 100 miles have been on their way since 4:00 a.m., and on the roads around the Grandma Temple, there is a sea of vehicles, cars, motorcycles, electric cars, bicycles, etc., which occupy the entire village road. The vendors selling tribute and incense caught up with the good business, and the money was too much to count. The incense at the grandmother temple is filled with thick smoke, and the people who enter the incense are crowded, and people move their steps little by little around the grandmother Buddha statue and turn around it counterclockwise. There are newlywed couples seeking children; There are also young people who seek longevity for the elderly; There are also those who pray for the peace of men and women who work far away. The grandmother's temple fair on the high courtyard wall is also a far-reaching Buddhist activity.
Ulzhou's paper-cutting is famous all over the world, and it is also the intangible cultural heritage of Ulzhou, pasting window flowers, sticking pairs, and some figures, flowers and birds patterns, Ulzhou people can use paper-cutting to express their cultural connotation, Ulzhou has inherited paper-cut villages, paper-cutting streets, paper-cutting factories, etc., they use dexterous hands to bring people the visual enjoyment of paper-cutting culture, and at the same time increase the employment opportunities of local people, creating wealth. It has improved the living standards of the people.
2. Ulju people
When I was very young, I heard that the people of Ulzhou were very capable, and legend has it that the people of Ulzhou who were walking on the road had no money to buy food when they arrived at the meal, so they went to the land to pee and work a piece of urine sludge, and pinched a monkey and sold it to solve the problem of eating. Therefore, some people call the people of Ulzhou Monkey County, and the monkey spirit is very capable. I feel that the people of Ulzhou are ingenious, hardworking and intelligent, not afraid of difficulties, and able to endure hardships, which embodies many fine traditions of the Chinese nation.
I've seen a Ulju man wash his hand with gloves on his hands and soak in the washbasin, then apply the soap evenly to all parts of the glove, then start rubbing and rinsing so that the gloves are clean and thorough.
Later, I had the opportunity to work in Ulzhou to see the laborers carrying the steel pipes, the steel pipe frame is five or six meters away from the steel pipe pile, the two of them did not transport the steel pipes one by one to lift the steel pipe frame, but first find two short steel pipes parallel to the side of the steel pipe pile to support up, the low end pointed to the steel pipe frame, so that they can use the potential energy to roll down the steel pipe from a high place one by one, pile under the steel pipe frame, and then lift it to the steel pipe frame one by one, this is the wisdom of Ulzhou people.
There is also the winter paving cement pavement, the paved pavement is covered with a blanket to maintain and keep warm for half a month, after uncovering the blanket, there are many blanket small pieces frozen and stuck on the pavement, the pavement is densely packed with blanket hair, Ulzhou people lit a blowtorch on the road little by little to burn the wool, squatting on the ground in the cold winter to clear a little until the road surface is clean. This kind of dedication is perhaps only possible for Ulju people.
The female workers who clean in the Weidian apartment building, whether they are sassafras or mopping the floor, especially the floor on the first floor, they always keep drying, people come and go and continue to drag, meet people with a smile, maybe just mop clean and be trampled dirty, they have no complaints and always smile service. You go yours, I'll drag mine, the corridor is always clean and bright. I've seen cleaners in other units (outside of Ulju), who don't want people to move around when they mop the floor, as if they say I'm working and you shouldn't be here, and they stare at you or tell you to pull over or stop and wait for the ground to dry before walking, which makes people feel very uncomfortable. There is still a big gap between the people of the two places.
The dialect of the Ulju people, for example, we say, "Have you eaten?" In the same way, the people of Ulju said: "It's a barbarism", CHI, CI is not clear. There is always a brute at the end. We say "no", and the people of Ulju say "Mo". Ulzhou people who can't do it say "no home", things that don't have Ulzhou people say "no home", we say that can't do that, Ulzhou people say "that, don't top", we say things that can't be done, Ulzhou people say: "can't make trouble", we say: "I don't know", Ulzhou people say: "know, don't say", which means "know, don't say" is also equivalent to not knowing. We have no way of knowing who, when, and why we said it.
Ulju is a relatively closed area, surrounded by mountains and no trains, so it is difficult for foreign culture to penetrate, so it maintains the original regional culture. Ulju people are hardworking, intelligent, and detail-oriented, and can do every little thing to the extreme, which is widely praised and loved by people. I have not been in Wei County for a long time, and these qualities of them have made me deeply appreciate them from the bottom of my heart, and they also embody the excellent qualities of the Chinese nation of unremitting self-improvement and hard work.
Ulzhou, an ancient cultural city, inherits the cultural heritage of the ancestors, and embraces the new era with open arms, where there are not only heavy industries such as coal mines and electric power, but also soft power such as paper-cutting and folk culture, and I believe that generations of Ulzhou people will use their wisdom and hard work to create a better tomorrow.
About the Author:
Liu Yiming is a member of the Zhangjiakou Writers Association. Zhangjiakou Daily Literary Supplement published more than a dozen essays such as "Spring Song" and "Qingshui River", and published poems and essays in China Datang Daily for many times, among which Shadian's Spring won the second prize of the group company, and the Mid-Autumn Festival Caprice won the Deep Good Essay Award. Senior Economist.