Taste of cultural countryside Wenden small fruit "smart" to do a big industry

Jiaodong folk customs do qiao fruit over Tanabata.

　　August 14 is the Lunar Tanabata. At 7:30 a.m., at the mouth of Houdao Village, Zeku Town, Wenden District, Weihai City, Shandong Province, Ci Shenxia, a 60-year-old villager, was waiting for the factory's shuttle bus. Aunt Ci, who has been engaged in seafood farming for half a lifetime, did not expect that when she was old, she would make money by making flowers and dumplings, an "old craft that revolves around the pot table".

　　Aunt Ci works at a food workshop that specializes in making pasta 3 kilometers from home. On the eve of the Tanabata Festival, the number of orders for qiaoguo and happy cakes in the festival increased, and Aunt Ci and more than 10 old sisters were very busy. In the workshop, the shape of the ball on Aunt Ci's hand was constantly changing, and in the blink of an eye, a carp-like qiaoguo appeared.

　　Qiaoguo has a profound historical and cultural heritage. In Jiaodong, since ancient times, there has been a farmer's proverb of "watching the valley show on June 6, and watching grain and rice on July 7", and every family will bake fruits and make happy cakes to welcome the harvest of grain. The elders wear the baked fruits in a string of red threads and wear them around the necks of the juniors, implying cleverness and cleverness.

　　Qiao guo is a kind of Jiaodong flower feast, and the custom of flower food has a history of more than 300 years in Weihai Wenden. In Wenden, steaming and making fruit is the mastery of housewives, and every festival, wheat flour will be used to make 12 zodiac signs, fish, swallows, phoenixes and shou peaches, which are steamed and cool, and become a "work of art" with a considerable and edible image.

　　Such "works of art" have been infamous for a long time. Until 2009, Jiaodong Hua rao was officially listed in the intangible cultural heritage of Shandong Province, rooted in folk traditional customs gradually into the public eye, to the market, a piece of exquisitely carved "works of art" through the clever and industrious Wenden women, to thousands of households.

　　In the food production workshop where Aunt Ci works, you can see the mature production process and supporting production and packaging equipment of Hua Rao.

　　Wa dough, hair noodles, kneading dough, kneading, pot steaming, all aspects are produced by hand. According to Lin Hong, the person in charge of the enterprise, the output value of Qiaoguo accounts for about 20% of the company's annual revenue. Including Qiao Guo, this year's flower dumpling products have been exported to Canada on the other side of the ocean, and domestic orders are in short supply.

　　"Old craftsmanship" to enter the market, but also to the new concept of collision, Beijing Jiaotong University, Ludong University in Wenden set up an off-campus practice base, young people in colleges and universities with technology and creativity, combined with the traditional production skills of flowers to carry out research, a number of technical problems such as fermentation, quality control, storage and transportation, have been cracked one by one, more importantly, to the rural mothers of the new ideas of industrial development.

　　Aunt Ci was also invited to the university classroom to explain traditional crafts to the students.

　　Today's Wenden Flower Rao integrates more creative design elements, does not stick to the ancient law, and the shape design is more abundant and diverse. Traditional crafts have become green "smart" manufacturing, and small workshops have moved towards large industries.

　　A few days before the Qixi Festival, the Wenden District Agricultural and Rural Bureau, together with the leading enterprises and industrial experts in the flower and food industry in the district, held three consecutive training courses on the processing of flowers and dumplings in the enterprises where Aunt Ci worked, and more than 120 rural women kneaded and shaped the noodles with Aunt Ci on the noodle case, learning the production skills of flowers and dumplings, and more rural women became members of the "flower dumplings" industry army.

　　Data from the Wenden Flower And Dumpling Association show that at present, the Wenden flower and food industry has been quite large, with more than 120 food business entities, including more than 20 large enterprises and more than 100 small workshops, and more than 1,000 rural women who are stable engaged in the flower and food industry. Flowers and flowers have become the "golden food" to get rich. (Guo Yancheng)

Source: Farmers Daily