There is a big ginkgo tree in Yaoxi, which stands upright in the autumn wind and is magnificently set by the blue sky. The golden leaves return to their roots and form a circle under the tree, which is called beauty. Behind the hillside, there are green bamboos as foil, just like the ladies-in-waiting of the empress. White walls and black tiles in the middle, strewn at random, and taking photos, it can praise a large piece.
Although I am not a mountaineer like me, I am married to the "knower" who used to be a mountaineer, and I understand that the more beautiful this place is, the more lonely it is.
However, it still belongs to Hangzhou, where there is paradise above and Suzhou and Hangzhou below. Yaoxi is located in the northwest corner of Tonglu, Hangzhou, 76 kilometers away from the county seat. It is the most remote administrative village in Hecun Township and is located at the junction of three counties. If a chicken stands at the entrance of the village and screams, Tonglu, Chun ‘an and Lin ‘an counties can all hear it, which is called "Jiming Three Counties". If this chicken lays an egg and unfortunately rolls down the hillside, who knows which county it wandered to? The villagers in the three counties never care about such trivial matters. They have lived here for generations, without dispatching, quarreling or fighting, which is a bit of a "peach blossom spring" temperament.
I brought my tea culture team to Yaoxi, just to visit tea in Laocrow’s Nest and worship tea in Micro Tea House. It was the old village chief who took me to the crow’s nest a few years ago. There are no crows in the crow’s nest. I heard that in the past, it was so dark that it flew out during the day and "dark clouds crushed the city to destroy it". At night, it turned back and the top of the mountain was dark. I don’t know when it started, but the old crow suddenly disappeared, and there was no one left.
Thousands of acres of tea gardens also disappeared. Once upon a time, they were very healthy, shaded by sunny cliffs, covered by bushes and bamboo forests, and truly diffused light through them. Although there are no tea gardens on the sloping land of yellow soil, clusters of tea tents in the bamboo forest are old and short, and they are still stuck there, and their temper is with the bamboo roots, and they are also convinced that Qingshan does not relax.
The remaining teapots were planted in the 1950s and 1960s, but they seem to be called ancient tea trees. It turns out that ancient tea and wild tea are two concepts-only a truly self-growing tea tree can be called a wild tea tree. The tea in Yaoxi is not wild, but it can still be called "ancient tea". Dr. Liang Huiling of our team built a doctoral workstation here. Her major is breeding.
Chen Yafei, the secretary of Yaoxi Village, is a local, young and beautiful. She married outside the mountain. When the child was only half a year old, she lived back in the mountains and became a college student village official. She is going to do a big thing now: restore the tea mountain in Laocrow’s nest. The village found me as a "country sage", and let me connect this wooden tip.
I’ve been here many times for this tea. I’ve seen dogwood, yew, wild flowers, long-lost luhua chicken and manly rooster. It’s nothing, but I’ve seen groups of macaques, which should be rare. The monkeys roared, imposing, and unscrupulously ran into the villagers’ kitchens, and opened the cupboard door to eat. They also collaborate with wild boar to harass human beings. Wild boar is responsible for arching the ground, and monkeys are responsible for planing sweet potatoes and corn. Fortunately, they don’t eat tea, so I don’t care about them. They can do damage, but the villagers never interfere. Let them toss, wild animals should be protected.
In order to grow tea, we first renovated a crumbling and dilapidated auditorium into a micro-tea manor loved by the villagers. The construction company was responsible for the construction and production with the money from the village and the design ideas from the team. I specifically asked to build a big fireplace. Imagine that when the mountains are closed by heavy snow in winter, the villagers gather here, chatting, baking sweet potatoes and watching the heavy snow outside the window. Isn’t it romantic? Of course, this is my romance for them, but they may not think so themselves-the days in the mountains are too cold and cheerless, and the villagers need lively popularity.
Ancient villages have been built here for thousands of years. Fiona Fang is 20 miles, with more than 200 farmers and a population of more than 600. Along the stream, the green hills are green and green, and the winding water meanders. If you stroll through the valleys, you will see a long green screen. The villagers here are mainly named Chen, Lu, Wu and Cai, all of whom have migrated. Why did the ancestors of Yaoxi Village run into such a deep mountain? This is related to the Fang La Uprising in the late Northern Song Dynasty. At that time, there was a Muzhou secretariat named Chen, a native of Xuzhou. When he saw that the peasant uprising had nowhere to escape, he simply hid in this deep mountain. After all, they are educated people. When the sun and the moon grow in this mountain, they have not forgotten to study. As soon as the situation was peaceful, a private school teacher named Lu was invited to teach the Chen family. Who knows that Mr. Lu is teaching books here, and he is gradually fascinated by this paradise, so he simply stays here and settles down. Later, Wu’s surname also came, and Cai’s surname also came. Everyone lived quietly next to each other, lived, worked, and prospered, and never fought with each other. For thousands of years, they have respected teachers and attached great importance to education, cultivated and read their families, advocated thrift and mutual help, and turned into a civilized village with simple folk customs and talented people. These 200 farmers have successively tested more than 100 college students, walked out of the mountain gate and walked into the vast world. The ancestor of the satrap level, the context is really not nonsense.
We have developed tea culture together here for several years. At the end of the other day, we decided to go to see it again. This time, I brought a lot of delicious food, books, and oil from authentic tea seeds. I specifically told my classmates to take pictures of the smiling faces of the villagers and make a smiling face wall. Who knows that it snowed heavily the other day, and two old people in the village slipped, so the plan had to be postponed. One, two, but three, this time all the way, we finally arrived at the micro-tea manor at the entrance of the village.
But when I saw a group of elderly people sitting under the plaque inscribed by Mr. Yao Guokun, a leading figure in the tea industry, I didn’t understand why. I quickly shouted: How can we let the old people sit at the door? Help them in quickly! Don’t freeze. Professor Wang Changjin, who came with me, stopped me and said, Old people like to sit in the sun at the door. My mother is like this. Professor Wang’s hometown is not far from here. He is an expert on genealogy. I specially invited him to tell the villagers about the past. But I sat down and looked intently. My goodness, how can this be said? Whether they can hear or not is still a question. It turns out that these old people are from seventy to ninety, and all who can come are here. What about young people? The youngest took the children to work and study in the city, the older ones went to do business, and the sixties went to Laocrow’s Nest to plant tea seedlings.
I remember that spring, the old village head led me to Laocrow’s Nest, pointing out small tea fields in the east and west, and told me that there used to be thousands of acres of tea gardens here. The summer before last, we sweated up the mountain and poked the ground with bamboo poles to observe the soil quality. I went to ask Weng Kun, a tea planting expert, what kind of tea to grow. He said that plum is the best for tea growing on a hillside of 45 degrees. After planting the tea seedlings, let me name the tea. I thought that because the green tea was picked late in the mountains, experts suggested making black tea, and so many children in the mountains passed the exam. They had to drink tea to stay up late, so I simply made up a story and read tea at night. Let’s call it "Yaoxi Tea". What’s the name of the green tea? I said: since one is called "tea", the other is called "green sleeves". When I saw Chen Yafei this time, she told me excitedly: Miss Wang, our tea name is registered!
The village has just opened up another 300 mu of tea garden in Laocrow’s Nest, and laborers in their sixties are working on the tea slope at the moment. And people in the city should retire at the age of 60. Professor Wang said that this will be a new rural lifestyle. Young people will go to work in the city, and when they are old, their leaves will return to their hometowns. In the future, the countryside will be a big nursing home, which will be responsible for the elderly to spend their twilight years.
This statement made me particularly fresh and asked the old people: Do you like coming to this micro-tea manor? They nodded and replied: Come on, come on, let’s sit here at night, have tea and chat. It’s pleasant.
(Author: Wang Xufeng, professor of Zhejiang Agriculture and Forestry University, former vice chairman of Zhejiang Writers Association)
Source: Guangming Daily (January 8, 2024, 01 edition)
Cover: Tonglu County People’s Government Website
Editor: Zhang Yongqun
Editor: Zhang Xueyu Xing Yanyan
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