In Longshan Town, Ju County, more than 30 women set up a big business of handmade intangible cultural heritage pancakes.
It was freezing outside in December, and there was no fire in Tang Yunhe's pancake room, but the hot pancake pan made the whole room warm, and three or four women were baking pancakes in front of their respective pans, and as the wet batter was pushed on the pancakes, there was a "whoosh" sound, and the steam rose. They kept moving their hands, chatting about the shortcomings of the village parents, and the laughter and steam squeezed out of the cracks and floated out of the house, forming wisps of mist.
There are almost 30 elderly people and women who stall handmade pancakes in Tang Yunhe here, all of whom live in the surrounding villages, and they do not give them strict working hours.
Like these women seven years ago, Tang Yunhe returned from working in the city to take care of his family and a piece of his field.
Longshan Town, Juxian County, is mountainous, with a large temperature difference between day and night, and the yield of crops grown here is not high, but the quality is very outstanding. Tang Yunhe, who returned to his hometown, had already visited all the supermarkets in the city, and knew that the crops in his hometown were no worse than those on the supermarket shelves. However, the local location is remote, and it has been difficult to open up the sales channels for agricultural products, and many people are guarding a field all year round, growing and eating by themselves. How can you sell the high-quality agricultural products in the field?
Tang Yunhe thought that when he was in the city, more and more people around him would specially pick handmade pancakes to buy and eat. I eat too many machine pancakes, and I still miss the old taste of the past. In that case, why don't you grind the crops in the field into flour and spread them into pancakes and sell them?
Just do it, Tang Yunhe bought several sets of tools, using the sweet potatoes produced at home as the main material, and made sweet potato pancakes that the older generation often eats. In the seventies and eighties of the last century, almost every household in the village had to make pancakes, and now although there are fewer people who make handmade pancakes, there are still people who know this craft.
Baking pancakes is not an easy job, people lie on the burning pan, push the batter, smooth it, and carefully peel it off to get a pancake, this series of actions lasts for several hours, and it is inevitable that you will be tired and have back pain. But the taste and texture of handmade pancakes can not be replaced by machine pancakes, fresh handmade pancakes bite down, tough but not hard, the mouth is full of sweet potatoes, many elderly people can't help but sigh when they take a bite: Well, it's still the same taste back then!
Tang Yunhe's handmade pancakes were very popular in the market as soon as they were launched. Sales are not a problem, and the women who make pancakes here are also very motivated. On average, they can burn about 70 catties a day, and they are paid by piece, one person can get a salary of more than 100 yuan a day, and they can get two or three thousand yuan to subsidize the family when they come here to work for a month during the slack time.
With flexible working hours and the ability to subsidize the family at any time, more and more people in the village want to come to Tang Yunhe to find some work here. Tang Yunhe also actively organized some women from poor families and left-behind women in rural areas, so that they could join the handmade pancake industry, engage in flour grinding, fire and other work, and teach pancake skills to those who are willing.
However, the number of people who wanted to learn how to make pancakes exceeded Tang Yunhe's expectations, so she simply set up a handmade pancake training class to train people who wanted to learn the craft for free during the off-season. After completing your studies, you can work in Tang Yunhe here, or you can start your own business. At present, Tang Yunhe's training class can be held twice a year, and more than 30 people in each batch come to sign up for study.
Tang Yunhe said that now handmade pancakes are paired with high-quality agricultural products, and annual sales can reach 2 million yuan. The crops in the fields of Longshan Township have become the taste of carrying the skills of a generation in the hands of these women who make pancakes, and they have gone out of the township and into the dining tables of thousands of households.
In 2023, the skill of making pancakes by hand will be included in the list of intangible cultural heritage of Rizhao City, and Tang Yunhe will become the inheritor of the handmade pancake making skills. The women who worked with them were also very happy: they used to think that they were here to work to make pancakes, but now they feel that they have also contributed to the inheritance of traditional crafts, and they are very proud!
Mass newspaper and rural mass reporter An Zhen correspondent Sun Kaishi