"From a dilapidated village, full of garbage ants and insects, and often sleeping in the open with drug addicts, it has transformed into a cultural, commercial and tourism complex that has won many honors, been affirmed by people from all walks of life, and has been stationed in nearly 100 businesses and has a small reputation, which is full ......of emotionJust after 0:00 on July 1, 2023, Liao Yuming posted a circle of friends to commemorate the fifth anniversary of his operation team stationed in Xixi Ancient Village.
Xixi Ancient Village is located in Liaobu Town, Dongguan City, according to the introduction of the local village ethnography and local chronicles, the village was founded in the Ming Dynasty in the third year of Hongzhi, has a history of more than 530 years, covers an area of 88 square kilometers, the existing Ming and Qing Dynasty ancient buildings are one of the largest and most intact ancient villages in the Pearl River Delta region, and have been rated as "Famous Historical and Cultural Villages of Guangdong Province".
Once upon a time, with the expansion and development of the city, many villagers of the older generation gradually moved out of the ancient villages, and the younger generation also went out to work, and the villages became decayed and tended to be abandoned.
Five years ago, 28-year-old Liao Yuming and more than a dozen young people of the same age officially started the transformation of this century-old village, facing an almost poor and white "hollow village", he and a team of less than 20 people served as construction workers, community stewards, designers, operators, and merchants at the same time, building trust with villagers and merchants, reshaping community relations, promoting cultural relics protection and revitalization of historical buildings, creating a commercial format to gather popularity, establishing a modern management model, and coping with the sharp drop in passenger flow caused by the epidemic ......Everything started from scratch, difficulties followed, and they buried their heads in hard work.
Xixi Ancient Village, Dongguan, a major cultural and tourism project in Guangdong Province during the 14th Five-Year Plan. (Photo courtesy of the interviewee).
At the beginning of October 2023, the National Day ** week is another busy season for Liao Yuming. According to the data of the short** platform, Dongguan Xixi Ancient Village has been shortlisted as the third most popular rural tourism destination in the country, welcoming tens of thousands of tourists every day. Traditional cultural studios such as qin, chess, calligraphy and painting, dance and singing, and intangible cultural heritage attract people to visit, and fashionable trends such as "check-in spots" and "Internet celebrity stores" have also settled in this village that has existed safely for hundreds of years, bringing a new atmosphere.
The biggest difficulty in the development of ancient villages lies in balancing the protection and development of ancient villages, and how to fully integrate with the local aborigines. Xixi Ancient Village will also keep pace with the times, hoping to become a well-known case of revitalization of ancient villages in China and a window for the export of traditional culture to the international community. ”
Liao Yuming said that in his more than 30 years of life, there are not many things that he can insist on doing for five years, one is to play, one is to be a soldier, and the other is to transform Xixi Ancient Village. He wrote in the second half of the fifth anniversary of his circle of friends: "Earlier I was going to write a tirade, and I thought I would go on a tirade. I don't know where to start until today. Look ahead. We'll see what happens in the next five years. ”
Liao Yuming in Xixi Ancient Village. (Photo courtesy of the interviewee).
**The teenager decided to go to the army
One day at the age of 19, Liao Yuming made up his mind to become a soldier. After talking to his family about this decision, he quickly shaved his flat head, prepared a large package of bruise medicine and bandages, submitted an application, and did a physical examination in one go without the slightest hesitation.
Until then, he described himself as living a life of "clothes to reach" and "food to open" at home, and although he boarded at the school, a nanny would come to the school every week to take home a change of clothes that he had saved up. He spends a lot of time playing with friends, playing games, or hiding in the instrumental music room for more than a dozen hours.
He likes rock and jazz, and also likes to play Chopin and Rachmaninoff's works, "When I hear **, my heartbeat will change with the rhythm of **, sometimes you see me sitting quietly, but in fact, my heart is surging more than anyone else." ”
When he was in junior high school, Liao Yuming had a small room of his own, in which a guitar, piano, organ, saxophone, and DJ player were placed. But also because he can play a good guitar, after graduating from junior high school, he was recruited to an art school to learn Xi piano, and later enrolled in a linguistics Xi class to study in Singapore.
It can be said that life was very comfortable and free at that time, but I always felt uneasy in my heart. I don't think about it when I have all kinds of fun and consumption, but as soon as I calm down, there will be a voice in my head yelling: I can't go on like this in this life!Liao Yuming calculated the cost of studying abroad in his heart, which was a lot of money for his family, and he began to wonder if he was hot-headed for a while, worried that he would not succeed in learning.
Liao Yuming plays the piano at home. (Photo courtesy of the interviewee).
In the end, I was ruthless and decided to go to the army to temper myself. A hazy desire for independence drove Liao Yuming to choose another track, he packed his bags, left a room full of musical instruments, and after passing layers of screening, he entered the Dongguan Armed Police Detachment to serve, and stayed for five years.
In the army, Liao Yuming ran the slowest. In the first recruit training, he ran a five-kilometer course in 37 minutes, ranking first from the bottom in the recruit company. "The average person only takes 28 minutes to run for the first time, and 37 minutes is equivalent to a brisk walk, and my physique was so poor at that time. ”
After running that section he was very unwilling, the army training pursued the "** poor practice **" run slowly "run slowly", this kind of principle slowly took root in his heart, the next training camp, he added 40 pounds of weight to himself, twice the weight of others, originally asked to run five kilometers, he insisted on running ten kilometers, and later ran with the captain of the physical exhaustion, and ran another ten kilometers.
Liao Yuming (left) in the army. (Photo courtesy of the interviewee).
Running until I vomited, really, I ran while vomiting, and I tied a rope around my stomach, and two people at both ends of the rope pulled me to run, and I also ran with two hands and two people. Normal running doesn't do that, but at that time you're almost at your physical limit, and if you still have to run, everyone will support you like this, as long as you don't fall down. Liao Yuming said that when he vomited, he felt that his willpower had reached the limit, but his body could still move, so he did not stop.
The hard training of the army made him constantly experience the moment of facing the limit, Liao Yuming felt that this was completely unimaginable to his previous self, "The mentality of wanting to escape and give up one thing because of fear of hardship and tiredness is completely gone." In his five-year military career, he has done an excellent job of escorting prisoners, security for the Spring Festival and other major tasks, and has also been commended, and these experiences have become a valuable spiritual wealth in his future life.
The difficulties and explorations of rejuvenating the ancient village
During the 2023 National Day ** Week, Liao Yuming and his team planned a large-scale ** meeting in Xixi Ancient Village - five stages named after the traditional Chinese tune "Gong Shang Jiao Zheng Yu", such as the Shang Stage performing folk dance, the corner stage performing rock music, and the whole village performing for 4 hours in a row.
Providing a performance stage for lovers of various styles in the ancient village is a continuation of his unfinished dream. "The merchants here are very versatile, some people like to dance, some people like to sing mountain songs, and some people are very interested in traditional musical instruments, everyone brings their friends and gets together from time to time to play, which is very fun and lively. I thought: why don't we form an art troupe here, so that we can perform publicly to more tourists**.
This idea was conceived as early as five years ago when I first walked into Xixi Ancient Village. Because he had the experience of planning ** festivals, shooting film and television dramas and micro films, when he visited Xixi Ancient Village for the first time, Liao Yuming was deeply attracted by the spatial characteristics of living near the water, and he was keenly aware that there is a lake at the entrance of the gourd-shaped village from the air, close to the ancestral hall and houses, which is a very suitable place for holding water live dramas and open-air ** festivals, which can create an open and leisurely atmosphere.
Later, through ** investment, he led the team to win the bid. In July 2018, the team was stationed in Xixi Ancient Village, and Liao Yuming conducted a half-year investigation of the ancient village's cultural history, large and small buildings and population.
He learned that Xixi Ancient Village was built on the gentle slope of the natural mountain, and the lake at the entrance of the village was connected to the Hanxi River, which was once one of the distribution waterways for transporting spices overseas. The planning and architecture of the village are very distinctive, and the layout of the laneway, the specifications of the ancestral hall, the shape of the dwellings, the building structure, the door direction of the dwellings, and the laying of the lanes are all unified. The layout of the lane is reasonable, the safety facilities are complete, and it is a village that is composed of walls, lanes, Yin's ancestral hall, study houses, houses, ancient wells, ponds, ancient banyan trees, etc.
But desolation and dilapidation are another impression of Liao Yuming's impression of this village. "There are only more than 10 elderly families left in the village, and the young people have moved away, only occasionally come back to make incense, so many houses are vacant, and it is not surprising that one or two typhoons blow down every year. In the ancient village management center, there are a few photos of the scene he shot at that time**: the houses in disrepair are only broken walls, rubble, and weeds.
A building in disrepair in Xixi Ancient Village in 2018. (Photo courtesy of the interviewee).
In the early days, the wasteland inside the ancient village was formed. (Photo courtesy of the interviewee).
Liao Yuming's mind is intertwined with the charm of the ancient village, with limited manpower and complex engineering, he has a premonition for the first time that it will be difficult to renovate, but he also feels that he has to explore a balanced path of protection and development of the ancient village.
In order to upgrade the infrastructure of the ancient village and restore the traditional characteristics, Liao Yuming and his team decided to follow the principle of "graded protection, repairing the old as the old, and building the new harmoniously" in the process of revitalization and utilization. There are 213 buildings in Xixi Ancient Village, and it is necessary to distinguish between dangerous buildings and normal buildings, and then take measures for graded protection according to different building types such as cultural relics protection units, historical buildings, and ordinary houses.
On the whole, we focus on retro, and the ancient houses that can be reinforced and preserved are mainly reinforced and preserved, and the city walls are repaired to maintain the simple style as much as possible. In view of the situation of the ancient village at that time, Liao Yuming and his team chose to carry out protective and rescue development, according to the old technology, using the original materials, such as the ancient buildings of the Ming and Qing dynasties, using red sandstone as the doors, window frames and wall foundations, with bean green terrazzo brick walls, to retain the traditional appearance of the ancient village in the details.
In order to restore its function as a public space, Liao Yuming and his team invested millions of dollars in the renovation of the public space, retaining the original exterior wall and structure, changing the internal wooden structure to a steel structure, opening up the partition to make a hollow view.
While maintaining the antique style of Xixi Ancient Village, the team also hired many familiar local villagers to help with the restoration of the first house, rain and sewage diversion, water supply and drainage, fire pipe renovation and other work, improve the problems of the ancient house without windows and poor lighting, and repair the infrastructure of the ancient village. From environmental sanitation to fire protection, water and electricity improvement, after the transformation, the infrastructure of Xixi Ancient Village has finally become livable and living.
I often go to the site to supervise the work, and sometimes I see that the workers are not fine and beautiful enough when building the wall, and I have to learn some construction knowledge Xi and start scraping. This experience made me feel that after the revitalization of a historic building, it can be continuously used and maintained with financial and human resources, which is actually better protection than simply vacant. ”
Liao Yuming and his teammates renovated the wasteland in the ancient village. (Photo courtesy of the interviewee).
At present, more than 160 of the more than 200 ancient buildings in Xixi Ancient Village have been fully revitalized, and thirty or forty studios have been established, such as qin, chess, calligraphy and painting, dance and singing, and intangible cultural heritage. At the same time, in terms of traditional folk activities, the operation team also inherited and carried forward the original activities such as "phoenix dance" and "gun head grabbing" in the ancient village.
In the evening, Xixi Ancient Village will change the calm of the day and become lively, and on holidays, it is full of tourists. Clubs, homestays, shopping, catering, entertainment, leisure, health, research, private schools, markets, studios and other complex formats attract a large number of tourists. During the Spring Festival in 2021, about 20,000 people came to Xixi Ancient Village every day to take photos and check in, which was very popular, and the shops in the village also boomed with business, and many shops became "Internet celebrity stores". In 2022, Xixi Ancient Village was rated as a "Night Culture and Consumption Cluster Area in Guangdong Province" by the Guangdong Provincial Department of Culture and Tourism. Xixi Ancient Village ranks first on the local hot list on Douyin all year round, and is known as "Dongguan Hongya Cave".
The purpose of revitalizing the ancient village is to let more people come here and know about it, so we hope to achieve the cultural value of the ancient village to the greatest extent. Liao Yuming hopes to build Xixi Ancient Village into a cultural, commercial and tourism landmark for the revitalization of ancient villages, so that people are willing to enter the ancient village and make the ancient village truly "live".
The ideal of a rebuilt living community
The injection of young vitality has finally bid farewell to the desolation of Xixi Ancient Village. However, the lack of conditions for commercial development, the obstruction of communication and negotiation with villagers, and the sharp decline in passenger flow caused by the epidemic ......Difficulties large and small came one after another, and Liao Yuming tried his best to deal with them, but he often couldn't avoid being haunted by questions like "can this thing be done".
Many of the uneasiness, worries, and concerns he had had, he lightly said, "eventually overcame them." He attaches more importance to the present and the future, "The more the ancient village develops, the more I feel that I have a lot of responsibilities to the villagers, to the merchants, and to the tourists. If the responsibility is there, we can't leave it alone. ”
A well in the village is open all the year round, considering the safety problem, he found someone to cover the well, some villagers who need water do not know the inside story and scolded him, he listened silently, took the initiative to make peace, and finally found a way to use the well safely. In the early days of the stationing, many villagers still had a wait-and-see attitude towards the development project of the ancient village, and were unwilling to rent out their own houses, Liao Yuming went to the house to understand the demands, and actively communicated with the villagers with the village cadres, analyzed the current situation and development prospects of the ancient village, gave commitments, and did a good job in negotiation.
In the process of running the ancient village, we provided services and support such as hygiene, publicity, security, etc., so we coordinated with the merchants to collect management fees, but some villagers who set up shops in the village did not understand, they thought that this was their own home and there was no need to pay management fees. In order to negotiate this matter, the operation team and the villagers negotiated in the office until three or four o'clock in the morning before finally reaching an agreement. ”
Liao Yuming (white) visits businesses in the ancient village. (Photo courtesy of the interviewee).
When the management of the ancient village market is not mature, some villagers pour sewage directly into the lake when operating restaurants, and there has been a phenomenon of vicious competition and fighting, every time there is a dispute, it is necessary to fully explain and communicate the work, Liao Yuming patiently and the villagers, merchants reason, put the facts, and win trust with sincerity and action.
When attracting investment, we also seek truth from facts, do not draw cakes, do not brag, and clearly tell the merchants the advantages and disadvantages of the current development of the ancient village, what are the plans, and what difficulties may be faced. Some large restaurants will settle in, and I will also contribute a part of the capital to share the risk. As the person in charge of an ancient village renovation project, Liao Yuming has the shrewdness of a businessman, but he always believes that sincerity and integrity are the keys to this business.
In 2022, affected by the epidemic, the passenger flow in the ancient village has dropped sharply for a long time, and the number of Liao Yuming's team has also been reduced to ten. The owner of a coffee shop was short of manpower for renovation, so he enlisted a team of designers to help clear the rubble and weeds and tidy up the wasteland. Some shops were unable to open and had little income, so he repeatedly forgave the rent and worked with the tenants to overcome the difficulties. After the popularity gradually returned, it became popular to make tea around the hearth, and he helped the merchant Zhang Luo plan, build a cement table, give away tea sets, and help contact advertising companies to shoot promotional videos.
Many young people who come to Gucun to start a business are talented and can endure hardships, so I want to reserve a platform for them to give full play to their strengths, and try to help as much as possible and be friends with them, rather than just collecting rent and renting a relationship. ”
He said that some merchants came to the ancient village to start a business and met their partners, had children, and settled here, which is a rare fate. During this year's New Year, he organized the merchants in the ancient village to gather together for a "birthday dinner" to give gifts and blessings to 10 one-year-old babies. He plans to develop some free public welfare research activities in the ancient village in the future, so as to provide traditional culture nourishment for the growth of more children.
An old aunt who lives by the lake, every time it rains heavily and the house leaks, I will go to help her mend the tiles, because the children are not around, and there is no one to take care of many things. After the development of the ancient village, her children came back to open a shop, and now the family lives together. On the afternoon of the interview, the old aunt was busy preparing to open a stall to sell snacks with her family at the door of the house, and when she saw Liao Yuming, she warmly greeted her and told the reporter that "I hope the ancient village will become more and more prosperous."
I am a native of Meizhou, a Hakka person, and the Hakka culture is that the whole big family lives in the Weilong House and lives a kind of living life. Xixi Ancient Village feels the same way for me, I like the community atmosphere, it's more than just a commercial complex. After these five years, Liao Yuming feels that there is a lot of responsibility on his shoulders, and he has a career commitment to the villagers and merchants of the ancient village, as well as financial exchanges, and most importantly, a friendship like a neighbor. He wants to persevere, so that the tourists who come to Xixi Ancient Village can have fun and relax, and let the villagers and merchants here continue to create a beautiful and happy life.
General Planner: Rong Mingchang and Liu Jiangtao.
Executive planner: Wang Jia, Chen Weibin.
Project Coordinator: Su Fennan, Chen Chengcheng, Li Lin.
Video: Tang Guxiao, Li Menglin.
Text Coordinator: Zou Lin Ye Ziwen.
Text: Wang Yuling.
Design: Li Jiaqi.