The change of happiness flowing in poetry - the new story of Longtan Ancient Village in Pingnan

Longtan Ancient Village tourists come and go, "new villagers" in sketching, here has become a local rural tourism "net red" place.

According to a report by the Mindong Daily on October 14, "The Siping Opera echoes, the people's wine wafts, embraces the new era, and the ancient village is famous..." This is the national day holiday, and Chen Xiaoju, a villager in Longtan Village, Xiling Township, Pingnan County, Ningde City, who is working outside, returned to his hometown to play.

At this time, the autumn mood of Longtan Ancient Village is thick: between the mountains, green bamboo terraces, yellow rice, red persimmons; under the mountain, small bridges and flowing water, ancient house promenades, tourists bustling. As early as the National Day festival, the booking rate of 40 homestays and 380 beds in the village has exceeded 80%. During the 8-day long holiday, it received about 35,000 tourists, and the income from homestays, restaurants, agricultural specialties and other products totaled about 1.5 million yuan. As the "net red village" in Pingnan, Longtan Ancient Village has caught fire again in anticipation.

In Chen Xiaojuan's impression, his hometown three years ago was not such a vibrant scene.

Hidden in the green mountains and green waters of Longtan, provincial traditional villages, historical and cultural villages. Here, the history is long, the century-old houses are scattered, and the ancient rhyme is long. There is also a "Siping Opera" in the village, which is famous for its unique singing and performance, and is listed in the first batch of national intangible cultural heritage. On cool summer nights, next to the flowing water of the small bridge, the villagers gathered together, singing a big drama in a long and short tone, which became the warm memory of countless Longtan people.

When the ancient village encountered the "tide of going out", Longtan Village, which originally had a population of more than 1400, had less than 200 people left behind, and most of them were elderly and women. Old houses have fallen into disrepair, ruins, snubbed doorways, mottled moss marks, telling of vicissitudes and helplessness.

With a youthful dream, Chen Xiaoju also left home, joined the army, demobilized, and employed, and settled down in the city. Whenever I return to the village and walk into the dilapidated old house, the empty nostalgia can't stop gushing into my heart: "The front yard is new moss and green, and the backyard is grass and flowers." How many people and things, only left in sleep. ”

"People are gone, the home is empty, the village is gone, do we still have people from our hometown?" A sigh landed in the hearts of Longtan's people.

The horn of rural revitalization sounded, and in March 2017, Pingnan based on the rich local traditional village resources, explored the road of rural revitalization led by cultural creativity, and Longtan was "desperate for life".

In that year, the Longtan Cultural and Creative Project was launched, adhering to the concept of innovative development, focusing on the weaknesses, pain points and difficulties of villagers and villages, and promoting the implementation of the project.

Rural revitalization, people are the main body. Longtan awakens the villagers' cultural self-confidence and self-consciousness by sending them to Sungai Antai Art City to learn oil painting creation and hold traditional opera folk culture festivals; by creating a new way of life that meets the needs of a better life, attracting urban people to "go to the mountains and go to the countryside" to become "new villagers" and issue residence permits, so that they have more sense of identity and belonging; through the development of new economic formats, let villagers participate in rural rectification and transformation, create more employment opportunities, and attract villagers from abroad to return.

Longtan original 90% of the old houses have been vacant and deserted, based on these resources, the village innovation housing circulation model, the village committee to establish an intermediary platform, the full implementation of the "old house lease for 15 years" model; innovation of the ancient village repair model, the establishment of "'new villagers' funding, free design of the resident art team, the village committee to organize construction and construction" mode, in accordance with the concept of "repairing the old as before" and "one house and one feature", simple and elegant combined with modern aesthetics, so that the traditional villages do not lose the nostalgia and ancient charm and simple and fresh; innovative project management model, The management mode of calculating the cost of the project is implemented on a trial basis, saving costs and improving efficiency. Through a series of innovations, the problem of "protection" and "use" of ancient buildings in traditional villages has been effectively solved, and the "broken wooden house" has become a "golden house".

In order for villages to retain people and prosper, they must create a more advanced way of life and entrepreneurial methods than traditional rural areas. To this end, Longtan Village makes up for its shortcomings, implements rural upgrading and transformation, environmental improvement projects, increases the supply of cultural services, and makes the countryside more livable and suitable for work; recasts the soul, establishes the Siping Opera Inheritance Association, establishes the Siping Opera Museum and the Longtan Wine Museum, holds folk activities such as opera festivals, wine festivals, and harvest festivals to protect and inherit traditional culture; activates, creatively transforms old houses into book houses, art studios, creative spaces, coffee houses, music bars, etc., and constantly gives birth to new economic formats, so that the countryside becomes a paradise for entrepreneurship and life.

Today's Longtan, the permanent population has recovered to more than 600 people, and attracted more than 100 "new villagers" from Hong Kong, Beijing, Shanghai and the United Kingdom, including many Hong Kong director Zhao Zhenqiang, financial writer Wu Alun and other well-known personalities; founded 28 various art sharing spaces, with more than 300 homestay beds, and 12 new business entities. The annual per capita income of villagers increased from 7985 yuan in 2017 to 17861 yuan in 2019, and the village's collective economic income increased from 57,000 yuan in 2017 to 169,000 yuan in 2019.

Clear streams, long laneways, staggered old houses, idyllic pastoral life, rich literary atmosphere. With the in-depth promotion of cultural and creative projects, Longtan has become a "net red" place for local rural tourism, and tourists are full of tourists every holiday.

Riding on the spring breeze of cultural creativity, Chen Xiaoju's former dilapidated old mansion has been leased and transformed into a Longtan Art Museum, with successive painting exhibitions and tourists weaving. And whenever he has free time, he will return to the village from the city to visit, and a new poem expresses his feelings about the new atmosphere of Longtan: "The beam is renewed with tiles, and there is no trace in the court." Connoisseurs give clever hands, and old house guests win the door. (Mindong Daily reporter Wang Zhiling text/photo)