After lunch that day, I learned that my friend had a day off today. After chatting, she might have time in the afternoon, so I asked her if she wanted to go to Qianfenxi Village together, but there was no driver.

Traveling 7 kilometers west from Xiadi, you will arrive at another more niche village - Qianfenxi Village. After lunch that day, I learned that my friend had a day off today. After chatting, she might have time in the afternoon, so I asked her if she wanted to go to Qianfenxi Village together, but there was no driver. She can ride an electric bike, but the battery is not enough. When she hesitates, the handsome little chef Lotte can give it to us. Ten minutes later, I returned to the place I walked last year.

In the past few days, Typhoon Compass has made landfall. It has also had some impact here in Pingnan. The weather is sometimes cloudy and sunny, and the wind is blowing. We followed the path at the entrance of the village to the west and entered the grassy area. We came down and sat by the river for a while, walking bumpily along the cobblestones.

All the villagers in Fenxi Village were named Zheng. Their ancestor Zheng Zongan was a descendant of Zheng Zhao, the ancestor of Zhejiang and Fujian. His father Zheng Hong once held the post of punishment in the late Tang Dynasty. Zheng Zongan served as the prime minister (Guanglu doctor) in the Later Zhou during the turbulent years of the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms . Seeing that the situation in the Later Zhou Dynasty was over and the court was in turmoil, Zheng Zongan abandoned his official position and moved to Fujian from Henan to settle in Fenyang. Soon after the Zhou Dynasty was destroyed, Zheng Zongan did not want to get involved in official career anymore. Seeing that the beautiful mountains and clear waters here were a good place to live, he settled here, built a shed and a house by the stream, and lived a secluded life away from the disputes. This place was named Fenyang, which is today's Lifenxi Village, and became the founder of the Zheng family in the former Fenxi Village. There were three branches of the Zheng family. The second branch, Zheng Junzhigong, moved to Xia Di and became the founder of Xiadi village. Therefore, the history of Qianfenxi Village is longer than that of Xiadi.

Before the Sui Dynasty , the former Fenxi Village belonged to the Houguan County of Southern Min. In the 29th year of Kaiyuan of the Tang Dynasty, it was classified as the twenty-four capitals of Hengxili, Gutian County. Historically, it had been under the jurisdiction of Gutian County, Fuzhou Prefecture for a long time. In the first year of Qianlong of the Qing Dynasty, it was placed under the jurisdiction of Pingnan. Due to its remote location, although the mountains and rivers are beautiful, no one has developed it. Until the early days of Song Dynasty, Zheng Zongan lived in seclusion here due to the change of court, married the Jiang family of Jiangkeng, and multiplied the clan line. Zheng Zongan became the founder of the Zheng family in Fenyang. The descendants of the Zheng family worked quietly on this land and became a prominent local family by the end of the Song Dynasty. Later, most of them moved to live in Fenxi River, and built the Zheng family ancestral hall on the riverside at the junction of the two streams to worship Zheng Zong'an Palace and Mrs. Jiang.

"The mottled stone tablets bear the traces of the entrepreneurship of the descendants of the Zheng family. The precious genealogies bear in mind the family origins passed down from generation to generation. The tall ancestral hall leaves the imprint of the blood. As time goes by, it is impossible to Blocking bloodline inheritance. The former Zheng family ancestral hall in Fenxi Village was renovated. Zheng family members came from all over the world to reunite. Although they are separated by thousands of miles, the Zheng family members are still connected by blood and will be passed on forever. "

After Zong An settled in Qian Fenxi, he has reproduced for 32 generations for more than 960 years. His descendants are distributed in Pingnan, Gutian, Youxi, Zhouning, Minhou, Lianjiang, Zhenghe , , Jianou, and other more than 30 villages, with a total population of more than 100,000. The land is endowed with outstanding people and talented people emerge in large numbers. In ancient times, there were many civil and military officials, including Gongsheng and so on. Today, the former Fenxi Village has a population of more than a thousand people of the Zheng family and is one of the main villages where the Zheng family lives in Pingnan County. There are nearly 150,000 descendants of the Zheng family who have migrated to other villages and counties and traveled to 11 countries in Southeast Asia. It can be said that they are flourishing and prosperous.

The southward water between Dongfen and Linfen eastward water converge here, so it is called Fenxi. There are two villages in the territory. To distinguish them, they are called Qianfenxi and Lifenxi respectively.

Qian Fenxi Village is built on the mountain and lives by the water. The head is narrow and the belly is big like a koi carp. A stream flows around the village. The ancient roads and stream banks on both sides are quiet and pleasant. Surrounded by green mountains and green bamboos, there are landscapes such as Zongzhou Island, Xiantan, Madun Stone, Niu Baixiang, Jiangjun Stone, Jigong Stone, Four Seasons Osmanthus Tree , Zhenggong Hall and other landscapes. The buildings in the village are still distributed in an orderly manner according to the original three vertical and eight horizontal lanes. The ancient residential complexes of the Qing Dynasty and Yuan Dynasty not only have the basic characteristics of the Jiangnan ancient residential standing style Hui style architectural style, but also have the characteristics of the mountain village residential style of Northeastern Fujian.There are still a number of ancient houses preserved in the village. From these simple stone and wood carvings, we can still see the prosperity of these large houses in the past.

Pingnan, where Qianfenxi Village is located surrounded by mountains, has abundant rainfall every year and is densely covered with streams. As we can tell from the name, there are Qixiyang Village, Xiping Village, Xijiaoyang Village, Xiuxi Village, Fengxi Village and other villages named after streams.

The agricultural foundation of the village is weak. Farmers earn most of their income by going out to work. Most of the permanent residents are the elderly and a few children. As of the fall semester of 2021, the former Fenxi Primary School has only four second graders, eight kindergarten students and two teachers who have retired and been hired back. The cars, horses, and people of the past have been replaced by modern vehicles. There is no large-scale industry in the village. The villagers mainly rely on raising chickens, ducks, sheep, cattle, pigs, etc., and cultivating fresh vegetables and fruits such as mushrooms, Chinese ginger, oranges, oil wheat, navel oranges, hibiscus plums, etc.

If Shuangxi and Xiadi started with hardware restoration, then Qianfenxi started with software and spiritual activation. The path of ancient village revitalization taken by Qianfenxi Village is different from that of the former two. The rammed earth board erected next to the bridge at the entrance of the village is eye-catching, with the name "China Academy of Art's Rural College" written on it. This is the first rural college of China Academy of Art that was originally a closed and mixed grain factory, and a future rural demonstration site.

The college is open to tourists. The old factory-style building combines local cultural features such as Pingnan covered bridges and rammed earth dwellings. The dark blue and white are very beautiful, and some walls still have large red characters from the period. It is fully functional, including restaurants, bookstores, canteens, and the only hotel in Qianfenxi Village, "Qianfenxi Valley", which is also open to tourists. The guest rooms are named after various villages in Pingnan. The rooms are diverse and exquisite, softening the cold industrial style.

This artistic experiment undoubtedly brought the outside world closer to the villagers, and also aroused my interest. When I was living in Pingnan, I was fortunate enough to meet Mao Hualei, one of the organizers of these activities. In August 2019, Mao Hualei, a 24-year-old student from the Department of Social Aesthetic Education of the School of Art Management and Education of the China Academy of Art, came to Qianfenxi Village to do his graduation project from Nayong County, Guizhou. He discussed the life problems of left-behind elderly people, the education issues of left-behind children, and the ancient environment with superior environment. The village's imminent demise caught his attention. He believed that education was the key to rural revitalization, so he came up with the idea of ​​opening a public welfare school in the village.

On January 7, 2020, he and several other alumni co-founded the "Rural Art School", the first new public welfare rural aesthetic education institution in China. In August of the same year, he launched the "1,000 Aesthetic Education Plan in Qian Fenxi Village" , with children from Fenxi and surrounding villages as the main target, art education courses with various forms and rich contents are planned and opened, such as handicrafts, installations, photography, calligraphy, painting, etc., to solve the problem of lack of educational resources for rural children and improve children's Hands-on ability, innovation ability, aesthetic ability . In two and a half years, he taught more than 1,000 students, gave more than 1,000 lectures, created more than 1,700 art works, more than 40 installation works, produced 3 stop-motion animations, held 4 exhibitions, and inspired the whole village 43 6 students and 20 parents studied independently. Most of the students found their own interests and hobbies in the "Rural Aesthetic Education Class", and the parents also felt a stronger sense of belonging and responsibility.

"What's for dinner tonight"

Every villager in Fenxi knew him before. One day during lunch time, he saw a villager's house with only two people cooking a lot of porridge. He asked and learned that because there were few people, he had no appetite. In order to save trouble, make more porridge at noon, and dinner will be solved, and the side dishes can be as little as possible. That night, he and his team gathered around the fire to eat sweet potatoes. From roasting sweet potatoes to a food festival, and from the food festival to a hundred sweet potato delicacies at home. I don’t know who said, “Why don’t we go to the villagers’ homes to cook?”, so the “What’s For Dinner Tonight” activity was born. Principal Mao and his classmates went to the villagers’ homes the day before yesterday to chat and reminisce about the memories and expectations of delicious food. , formulate recipes and prepare dishes separately.The next day, Principal Mao and his classmates took the purchased ingredients and went to a villager's house to cook together and have a lively dinner together.

The villagers were cooking their own specialties and favorite foods. Everyone was competing with each other on their cooking skills, recalling their family’s past, and chatting about the village’s past. The art school compiled these stories into a document based on the genealogy and village history, paired with the family's specialty dishes, and worked with many left-behind families in the village to create a menu for visitors to order. Tourists choose which story they want to hear and which dish they want to eat. This not only stimulates the enthusiasm of the villagers, gives the left-behind elderly people a greater sense of value, but also brings them life benefits. So far, "What's For Dinner Tonight" has collected 14 stories and dishes from 14 families.

After arriving in Qianfenxi, Mao Hualei learned that apart from doing some farm work and playing cards and chatting in their spare time, the villagers had no other activities every day. In a year, only the New Year's Eve sacrifice to the stove and the thirteenth day of the first lunar month to welcome Mrs. Chen are collectively celebrated, which can be regarded as two festivals. The happiest moments of the rest of the time are mainly in eating, and there is no other more fun. He wondered if it would be interesting to celebrate traditional, national, local, world, international or other forgotten festivals in the village. Woolen cloth? Can we create some festivals with different contents in an artistic way to make the villagers happy together? In this way, in 2021, the "Happy Holidays" project was born.

In every festival, he leads the team and the villagers to celebrate it seriously, allowing the villagers to participate and plan together, so that traditional customs become active again. During the Waking of Insects, the art school organized the children to go sowing together. During the Spring Equinox, they took adults and children to the jungle for outings and picnics, COS scenes from famous paintings from various countries; on Chinese Valentine's Day, they took the children to various houses to mend clothes for the adults; Laba During the winter solstice, they begged for rice and grains from every household, cooked Laba rice porridge that day and gave it to the whole village; during the winter solstice, the villagers made dumplings together to compete with who could eat them faster, made glutinous rice cakes, and competed with whoever ate the most, the winner. They won prizes; when they were young, they wrote Spring Festival couplets in Fenxi Valley, sent them to every house and pasted them... They spent all the hair on their heads to make every festival more interesting and fun. Let adults and children in the village love life and have something to look forward to.

The backward and impoverished Qianfenxi Village is slowly piecing together a complete field puzzle of its own. A group of young people who love the countryside use art as the glue to unite people and ignite it with their own enthusiasm. It touches the heart of Qian Fenxi Village.