This article**: The people**.
Niu Xubin. People** December 30, 2023 Edition 08).
The Longnan people in the Qinba Mountains pickle a vat of meat to store a vat of oil, pickle a vat of vegetables and fill a vat of water, send rice to the field where the wheat is harvested, and send oil and salt pots to the grandson of the full moon.
The clay pottery is loud and full of the fireworks of life. Jars and jars, filled with rice, flour, oil and salt, brewed with soju and vinegar, boiled with mountain spring tea, full of bitter, spicy and sweet and sour, inexhaustible world.
One day, when the sun was shining, I arrived alone in Shaba Town, Chengxian County, Gansu Province. The sky is blue, the river is clear, and in the deep autumn wilderness, the mountain beams piled up with loess are like coiled dragons dancing in the fire, confronting, jumping, continuous and undulating.
Following the movement of the wind, I seem to hear the sound of the sand echoing in the clay pots, tracing the relics and roots that have been passed down to a mountain village in ancient times. In 2003, pottery artifacts judged to be more than 2,000 years ago were unearthed on this hill, proving that the firing of Shaba stoneware can be traced back to the Western Han Dynasty BC.
There are kilns in Shaba, which are spread all over the mountain. The scene of firing kilns in a starry world is common, filling my childhood memories. The firewood burning at the entrance of the kiln is like a row of huge lamps, reflecting the creeping hillsides and villages in a grand manner. In those years, my mother often took me to visit relatives in Sapa. Amama Ryo climbed several mountains, passed a ravine full of pottery workshops, and went to visit my aunt in the reed-strewn Haneko River. In the countryside here, the reeds are called "feathers", and the wheat field is full of golden reed stalks, and several families push and roll the stone mills, breaking the reeds into strips and weaving reed mats. There are also many people's windowsills, under the eaves, and in the wing sheds, neatly drying and stacking the newly made mud jar mud pot blanks.
It was the agricultural slack season when the wax moon handed over the first month, the sky was fluttering with snowflakes, and the people in the mountains were still busy making mats and drying pottery. I saw fine beads of sweat on those bronzed faces. The small courtyards of every household are surrounded by reed straw and tank blanks. The backlog of reed mats and the piled up of mountains of mud are remarkable for the industriousness and abundance of the mountain people.
In the era when families farmed and things were scarce, the pottery kilns built on the stairs and mountains fed many villagers in the Shaba area.
Visiting the old artist Zhao Genyou, he said to me while grabbing clay: "It's hard to do this work, you have to touch the mud every day, and your ten fingers are soaked in the mud all day long." But Tao also picks people, his hands are not skillful, and he can't do this job well after studying for many years. "It is precisely because of the rigorous process and skillful firing skills that we must not only test the interlocking carefulness, but also temper the perseverance of diligentness. Only when ingenuity and kiln change magically collide can we finally create a beautiful utensil crystallized by labor and sweat.
The shape of the Sapa clay pottery is delicate and colorful, and it is made by traditional craftsmanship and firewood fire. Take a tea pot as an example, from clay to pottery, it can be called hundreds of fingers and several shapes. The craftsman first applied soft clay to the pottery mold, and the pedal pottery mold rotated from slow to sharp. A lump of ooze bulges in the palm of the hand, subservient to the model. The water flowed along the palm of your hand, and the creamy soft mud turned into a smooth tank wall in an instant. Then, relying on the dexterity of the palm, squeezing, pulling, and observing according to accurate eyesight, the can is made into a thin and uniform thickness. The pottery mold flies at a uniform speed, the jar in the hand is parallel to the waist, and then the "can ear" is added with the kneaned mud strips, and then the soft mud at the mouth of the can is pressed to make an open skimming edge, and finally the "can mouth" is pinched. The rigorous process needs to be kneaded by hand in the wet and soft state of the clay, and the shape is finalized in one go.
Since 2015, there have been professional teams and cultural enterprises to join the clay pottery inheritance and protection industry. Absorb traditional craftsmen, apply for scientific research projects, analyze soil composition, excavate local culture, search and rescue traditional skills, and restore abandoned kilns, so that the ancient skills that have fed many generations of ancestors can be rejuvenated, and the pottery used by families in the past can be re-entered into the daily life of thousands of households.
The new stoneware system follows the traditional ancient craftsmanship, and is endowed with the connotation of the times and modern atmosphere. The implantation of many cultural elements and the innovation of aesthetic concepts allow the meticulously crafted art techniques and pleasing calligraphy and painting art to be carved and expressed on the clay blank. The firing under the automatic temperature control and data monitoring of the pottery kiln makes the clay pottery enter the kiln in one color, which is unexpectedly brilliant, the aura is shining, and the color is more beautiful.
A mountain township, with an admirable handicraft inheritance, is the birth and gift of this land, and is also the diligence and wisdom of the people. These ordinary folk artists work together to create exquisite utensils. From the time when there were reed mats, which meant how many harvests and grains, and how many jars and cans, it showed how solid the situation and life were, the people of Shaba followed the family handicraft to weave the reeds into kang mats and drying mats, and kneaded the soil into large jars and small jars. They magically created ordinary grass and ordinary soil into the utensils of life, and turned ordinary days into ingenious poems.
Entering the forks and ditches of the villages, you can see, the misty smoke and rain, the simple style, drifting from the stream, overwhelming. Listen, the peasants are working and singing mountain songs, and on the village stage, gongs and drums are noisy, and suona ......is melodious